Social Choice Versus Populism? An Interpretation of Riker's Political Theory

¹ Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962).

² See for example Browne, Eric C. and Dreijmanis, John, eds, Government Coalitions in Western Democracies (New York: Longman, 1982).

³ Riker, William H., Study of Local Politics: A Manual (New York: Random House, 1959).

⁴ Riker, William H., Democracy in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1953). In the text I have relied upon the second edition, published in 1965, since it is more accessible and substantially unchanged from the first.

⁵ Riker, William H., Liberalism Against Populism (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).

⁶ ‘Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System’, a Report of the Committee on Political Parties, American Political Science Association, supplement to American Political Science Review, XLIV (1950), No. 3.

⁷ Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 10, 251.

⁸ Democracy in the United States, pp. 1–34.

⁹ Democracy in the United States, p. 66.

¹⁰ Democracy in the United States, p. 86.

¹¹ Democracy in the United States, pp. 98–104.

¹² Arrow, Kenneth, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edn (New York: Wiley, 1963).

¹³ Black, Duncan, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

¹⁴ The Theory of Political Coalitions, p. 33.

¹⁵ Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).

¹⁶ Riker does pay some attention to the relative costs of forming different coalitions by introducing the idea of ‘side-payments’ which the members of a proto-coalition may offer to outsiders to induce them to join. Some aspects of ideological compatibility or incompatibility might be captured through the use of this idea – for instance where a side-payment takes the form of a promise to modify one's legislative programme. This is a less demanding way for ideological considerations to enter a theory of coalition formation than would be true of those theories in which ideological similarity is explicitly required. Compare, for instance, Axelrod, Robert, Conflict of Interest: A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1970) and de Swaan, Abram, Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations: A Study of Formal Theories of Coalition Formations Applied to Nine European Parliaments After 1918 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973).

¹⁷ I have constructed my interpretation of the argument from The Theory of Political Coalitions, Chap. 2 and Appendix 1, and from Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), Chap. 7.1 advise the interested reader who is new to Riker's theory to begin with Chap. 2 of The Theory of Political Coalitions, then to go to Positive Political Theory and then back to the appendix of the former work.

¹⁸ Hardin, Russell, ‘Hollow Victory: The Minimum Winning Coalition’, American Political Science Review LXX (1976), 1202–14.

¹⁹ There is of course a long-standing debate about realism and anti-realism in the philosophy of science. See, for example, Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), Chap. 6 and Ryan, Alan, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 84–97.

²⁰ The Theory of Political Coalitions, pp. 54–76.

²¹ Dodd, L. C., Coalitions in Parliamentary Governments (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976) and Schofield, Norman, ‘Political Fragmentation and the Stability of Coalition Governments in Western Europe’, paper prepared for European Public Choice Society Meeting, 03 1982.

²² Axelrod, , Conflict of Interest, pp. 179–83 and de Swaan, , Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations, pp. 147–283.

²³ The Theory of Political Coalitions, p. 248.

²⁴ Madison, James in The Federalist Papers, edited with an introduction by Rossiter, Clinton (New York: Mentor, 1961), No. 51.

²⁵ Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier Macmillan, 1970), Chap. 2.

²⁶ For this strict public choice assumption, see, e.g. Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 17–30.

²⁷ The Theory of Political Coalitions, pp. 108–14.

²⁸ Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance.

²⁹ Federalism, p. 11.

³⁰ Federalism, p. 111.

³¹ An Introduction to Positive Political Theory, Chap. 3.

³² Federalism, p. 136.

³³ May, Kenneth O., ‘A Set of Independent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision’, Econometrica, XX (1952), 680–84 and Still, Jonathan W., ‘Political Equality and Election Systems’, Ethics, XCI (1981), 375–94.

³⁴ Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 181–92.

³⁵ Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 233–53.

³⁶ Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, Stale and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), Chap. 10.

³⁷ Wolff, Robert Paul, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 58–67.

³⁸ See, for example, Rowley, Charles K. and Peacock, Alan T., Welfare Economics: A Liberal Restatement (London: Martin Robertson, 1975), pp. 19–22.

³⁹ Such a theory is advanced in Ackerman, Bruce A., Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); I have discussed aspects of this neutrality condition in Weale, Albert, ‘Review Article on Social Justice in the Liberal State’, Minnesota Law Review, LXV (1981), 685–700.