Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T01:21:54.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Selfish Voter Paradox and the Thrown-Away Vote Argument*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Paul E. Meehl
Paul E. Meehl*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota Medical School
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The probability that an individual's voting in a presidential election will determine the outcome being negligible, it is argued that participation is irrational if predicated on principles that are either egocentric or act-prospective. Voter participation, if rational, must rely on some over-arching principle that is (a) Sociotropic, (b) Axionomic, (c) Collective-distributive, and (d) Neutrofactual. A distinctively ethical component must be involved, such that all purely “economic,” “cost-benefit” models postulating selfish voter rationality are incoherent. The notion of “helping” to elect one's candidate is criticized and rejected unless formulated in a special way. An important pragmatic consequence of the analysis is that the idea (relied on by the two major parties) of “wasting one's vote” on a third party candidate is shown to be invalid or of more limited application than generally assumed. If a sizeable minority (e.g., college students) were educated to reject that argument, politics might be profoundly affected.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 11 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Dean Carl A. Auerbach (Law), Professor David Cooperman (Sociology) and Professor Rolf Sartorius (Philosophy) and three anonymous reviewers for their critical comments. A nondialogue presentation of this paper's argument, substantially equivalent but with some additional material included, is available from the author as “Difficulties with economic models of voter behavior,” Reports from the Research Laboratories of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Report no. PR-76-1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1976).

References

1 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957)Google Scholar.

2 Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971)Google Scholar. The present paper was drafted more than three years ago, and I am aware of the spate of articles meanwhile (1972–1976)devoted to aspects of the “voter calculus” problem. I have not discussed or even cited these recent contributions, because despite their merits and general relevance they do not bear appreciably on the distinctively ethical core of my argument. If I am right that no egocentric act-prospective rationale for voter participation will do, then elaborations or amendments of Buchanan and Tullock or Downs will not fix things up. Nor will further manipulations of the formalism. Thus to take one example, Ferejohn and Fiorina's paper on “maximin regret” ( American Political Science Review, 68 [September, 1974], 525–536)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. is an interesting and ingenious variation on the received model, but I think the reader will agree that it leaves my philosophical criticism quite untouched.

3 Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting,” American Political Science Review, 62 (March, 1968), 25–42 at p. 25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Hacking, Ian, “Jacques Bernoulli's Art of Conjecturing ,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 22 (August, 1971), 209–229 at p. 219 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gillies, D. A., An Objective Theory of Probability (London: Methuen, 1973) at p. 165 Google Scholar.

6 Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162 (1968), 1243–1248 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

7 See, e.g., Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (New York: Schocken Books, rev. ed. 1971)Google Scholar.

8 Reprinted (in part) in Population, Evolution, and Birth Control, ed. Garrett Haidin (San Francisco: Freeman, 1964), p. 37.

9 Pap, Arthur, Semantics and Necessary Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), chapter 11, “Reduction and Open Concepts,” pp. 302–360 Google Scholar.

10 See, e.g., Sartorius, Rolf, Individual Conduct and Social Norms (Encino, California: Dickinson Publishing Company, 1975)Google Scholar.

11 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907 Google Scholar; Dover Paperback Reprinting, New York: Dover Publications, 1966).

12 I am indebted to my colleague Rolf Sartorius for challenging this argument and forcing me to expand the dialogue hereat; as he is out of the country I do not know whether he will find the expanded form persuasive.

13 I am indebted to Dean Carl A. Auerbach for calling this usage to my attention and pressing the argument for that case.

14 See, e.g., Lyons, David, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially chapter II, “Describing an action.”