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The Logic of Electoral Preference: Response to Saraydar and Hudelson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Geoffrey Brennan
Affiliation:
Australian National University
Loren E. Lomasky
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Duluth

Extract

How may we best understand the motivational structure that stands behind individuals' acts of voting? In “The Impartial Spectator Goes to Washington” we suggested that expressive concerns swamp narrowly consequential motivations, in contradistinction to normal market transactions in which the priority is reversed. A striking consequence of this fact is that individuals will be led to vote for outcomes that they would reject were they in a position to act decisively. In this regard we found the moral psychology Adam Smith develops in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) (and, to a lesser extent, in The Wealth of Nations) remarkably fecund in suggesting alternatives to what we call the standard theory of electoral behavior.

Type
Discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

REFERENCES

Brennan, G., and Lomasky, L. Forthcoming. Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Kau, James, and Rubin, Paul. 1982. Congressmen, Constituents and Contributions. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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