Rational choice and voting: literature review of the paradox of voter turnout
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Economics
Language
en
Pages
69+6
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Abstract
What explains voter turnout in large elections? This question has been a subject of discussion in both political science as well as economics to the point that it is often argued that rational choice theory fails to account for the level of voter turnout in large elections. The reason for such argument is that for a self-interested rational voter, the ability to influence the outcome of the election with his/her vote is so small that for any positive level of voting cost, the net expected benefit of participation in the election is always lower than the said cost of voting. Nevertheless, voter turnout remains at a significantly higher level than zero even in large elections. This discrepancy in theory and empirical observation is known as the paradox of voter turnout and is the subject of inspection of this literature review. In the traditional economics models of voter turnout, the voter has been thought of as a strictly selfish being who cares only about his own individual utility when deciding whether to vote of to abstain from the electoral process. This implies that any corresponding expected benefit of voting will also be negligibly small whenever the population is large. However, recent models point towards the fact that the stakes are huge in large election and the entire society benefits from the act of voting and thus it is justified to assume that voters' have other-regarding preferences. In this manner the larger the population, the greater is the incentive to vote for those voters' who have such altruistic/paternalistic preferences. The expected benefit for such voters is increasing with the size of the population and thus are more inclined to vote in large elections. In the conventional models of voter turnout in economics, the role of aggregate uncertainty has been often neglected. Recent work in economic theory however shows that aggregate uncertainty is the key component of large elections. Without aggregate uncertainty, rational voters can more or less predict the level of voter turnout in equilibrium. However, when there is uncertainty in the preferences of the voters, then this implies that even though the voters are certain that sufficiently altruistic voters vote in the election, they do not know the proportion of such voters in the population. This level of uncertainty affects the probability each voter attaches his/her vote being the pivotal vote in the election and as a result, significant levels of voter turnout is witnessed in large election than those proposed by earlier models of voter turnout. Lastly, economics models have often assumed that a vote has a singular function of altering the outcome of the elections. However, elections are often held periodically and voters are aware of this periodicity to the point that their current voting behavior might be geared towards shaping the eventual policy positions that the candidates take in subsequent elections. Thus, voter turnout in large elections can also result due to the voters' willingness to influence the adopted policy positions of the respective candidates. When the assumption that a vote is only significant when it is pivotal is relaxed to allow for communication motifs of the voters, the paradox of voter turnout as much disappears from the economics models.Description
Thesis advisor
Välimäki, JuusoKeywords
economics, voting, turnout, rationality