Political Action in a Democracy

It is apparent that the individual citizen has almost no influence on the direction of his government, and that the collective citizenry, or electorate, have only the vaguest control over it. This thesis is supported most convincingly by Anthony Downs in his article "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy." Downs' theory is based on the idea that we live in an egoistic rather than an altruistic world, in which all people act in a rational fashion to further their own interests with no irrational regard for the interests of others except as they may coincide with their own.

Downs' hypothesis is best stated in his own words:

"Political parties in a democracy formulate policy strictly as a means of gaining votes. They do not seek to gain office in order to carry out certain preconceived policies and serve any particular interest groups; rather they formulate policies and serve interest groups in order to gain office. Thus their social function - which is to formulate and carry out policies when in power as the government - is accomplished as a by-product of their own private motive - which is to attain the income, power, and prestige of being in office" (137).

In short, politicians make policies solely to get votes so they can remain in or attain office. Therefore, it would seem that their self-interest (which is their only motivation in this model), would best be served by doing what their constituents want.

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to a lack of accurate and complete information for the politicians just as it does for the citizens. However, politicians have a stake in gaining a certain amount of information about the desires of the electorate because they need it to get elected or re-elected. This need naturally caused the development of a class of people who specialize in telling the government what the citizens' wishes are. Ironically, these are also the people who are often telling the citizens what to want in the first place. This brings us to the conclusion that lobbyists rather than ordinary citizens are the ones who have control over the government (Downs 140). The lobbyists or special interest groups have a disproportionate amount of political power because they are capable of influencing many votes, which in turn allows them to influence many politicians. They perform this trick by spending the resources necessary to persuade the public of a certain proposition or set of propositions. Then, they turn to the government and, posing as representatives of the people, they seek to persuade the government to enact those same propositions. Of course, these propositions are mainly beneficial to the special interest group in question and are only inc

Category: Government - P