Anthony Downs
American political scientist
Learn about this topic in these articles:
contribution to political science
- In political science: Theory of rational choice
…work in rational choice theory, Anthony Downs claimed that significant elements of political life could be explained in terms of voter self-interest. Downs showed that in democracies the aggregate distribution of political opinion forms a bell-shaped curve, with most voters possessing moderate opinions; he argued that this fact forces political…
Read More
free riding
- In free riding
Anthony Downs’s An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) implicitly highlights the problem of free riding in relation to democracy. It is rational for an individual voter not to vote, given the costs associated with voting and the infinitesimal chance of influencing the electoral outcome.
Read More