Information Costs & Democracy

AN ECONOMIC THEORY OF DEMOCRACY BY ANTHONY DOWNS: A REVIEW OF PARTS III (EFFECTS OF INFORMATION COSTS) AND IV (IMPLICATIONS AND HYPOTHESES FOR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT)

In Part III of this work, Anthony Downs deals with the roles, uses, and costs of information in society, together with the effects of these factors on democratic government. In the time honored tradition of economists everywhere and in every age, Downs begins by making some unrealistic assumptions that both ease his task of developing and justifying his contentions and cause those contentions to be somewhat less relevant to the real world. The most spurious of the assumptions made by Downs (1957) is that "no false information is published by any sources" p. 208).

Downs contends that, as information e

Related Essays

Democracy and the Media .... go where the majority of people cannot and find information the average .... in a variety of ways ranging from increasing the costs of democracy to focusing on .... (3583 14 )

Labor Union Decline & American Workers .... was becoming more of a threat to democracy than the .... of unionization and high labor costs, including rich .... by enormous growth in the information, technology and .... (974 4 )

Information Superhighway .... and launching a new age of digital democracy. .... built by the government, the information highway is .... the wherewithal to compete without overhead costs to weigh .... (3740 15 )

Reseach Design for Public Housing Projects .... fixed by the market, where they possessed perfect information concerning the .... complete the data collection process, and the costs of the .... The irony of democracy. .... (2326 9 )

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICAL DEMOCRACY IN S .... political opposition increases "the costs of repression .... of modern technology will make "democracy ever more .... industrial phase into an information--and technology .... (5696 23 )

Category: Economics - I