
Contents
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Democratic Theory before Rawls Democratic Theory before Rawls
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The Paradox of Voting The Paradox of Voting
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Downsian Democracy: The Median Voter Theorem Downsian Democracy: The Median Voter Theorem
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Making Sense of Ideology Making Sense of Ideology
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The Normative Purpose of Rational Choice Theory The Normative Purpose of Rational Choice Theory
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Ideals and Politics Ideals and Politics
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References References
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Note Note
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Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy
Get accessDepartment of Government, Dartmouth College
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Published:02 September 2020
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Abstract
Anthony Downs’s Economic Theory of Democracy has been marginalized in normative democratic theory, notwithstanding its prominence in positive political theory. For normative theorists, the “paradox of voting” testifies to the reality of moral motivation in politics, a species of motivation foreign to Downs’s theory and central to the ideals of deliberative democracy that normative theorists developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The deliberative ideal displaced aggregative conceptions of democracy such as Downs’s model. The ensuing segmentation of normative democratic theories that assume moral motives (like deliberative democracy) and positive models of democracy that assume selfish motives (like Downs’s theory) leaves both without the resources to diagnose the persistence of ideological partisanship and polarization that beset modern democracies. Engaging Downs’s theoretical contributions, especially the median voter theorem, would constitute a salutary step toward a democratic theory that integrates normative and positive theory.
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