IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v69y1975i03p926-928_24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Ethical Voter

Author

Listed:
  • Goodin, R. E.
  • Roberts, K. W. S.

Abstract

No rational egoist should bother voting because, as Skinner's Dr. Frazier notices, the probability of any one man casting the decisive ballot “is less than the chance he will be killed on the way to the polls.” No matter how deeply he cares about the electoral outcome, a man must realize that his vote is only one among very many. The larger the electorate, the smaller the probability of any one vote's changing the outcome, so in most modern polities the politically rational thing to do is to conserve on shoe leather. Real-world voters, of course, do flock to the polls, which is usually explained in terms of a feeling of “civic duty.” The fact that men get some satisfaction from discharging their civic duty by voting might answer the question of why it is rational for them to go to the polls. Unfortunately, it leaves another—how do they vote once they get there? Presumably, they go ahead and vote according to the dictates of their egoistic interests.

Suggested Citation

  • Goodin, R. E. & Roberts, K. W. S., 1975. "The Ethical Voter," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(3), pages 926-928, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:69:y:1975:i:03:p:926-928_24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400243797/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gaute Torsvik, 1996. "Why should Governments Redistribute Income?," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 23, pages 105-120.
    2. Nils Soguel & Alexandre Tangerini, 2005. "Fiscal Equlisation and Citizen's Preferences : Evidence from Swiss Municipalities," Public Economics 0507006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Serguei Kaniovski & Dennis Mueller, 2006. "Community size, heterogeneity and voter turnouts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 399-415, December.
    4. Louis Kaplow & Scott Duke Kominers, 2020. "On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout," NBER Working Papers 26913, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Marie-Anne Valfort, 2007. "Le vote éthique, une réponse efficace aux conflits ethniques ?," Post-Print halshs-00977028, HAL.
    6. Roland Iwan Luttens & Marie-Anne Valfort, 2012. "Voting for Redistribution under Desert-Sensitive Altruism," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 881-907, September.
    7. Stefka Koeva, 2008. "Private Markets and Political Markets: A Comparative Analysis," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 1, pages 30-57.
    8. Louis Kaplow & Scott Duke Kominers, 2017. "Who will vote quadratically? Voter turnout and votes cast under quadratic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 125-149, July.
    9. Richard Jankowski, 2002. "Buying a Lottery Ticket to Help the Poor," Rationality and Society, , vol. 14(1), pages 55-77, February.
    10. Karl Widerquist, 2003. "Public Choice and Altruism," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 317-337, Summer.
    11. William H. Kaempfer & Anton D. Lowenberg, 1993. "A Threshold Model of Electoral Policy and Voter Turnout," Rationality and Society, , vol. 5(1), pages 107-126, January.
    12. Stephen Drinkwater & Colin Jennings, 2007. "Who are the expressive voters?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 179-189, July.
    13. Hamlin, Alan & Jennings, Colin, 2011. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 645-670, July.
    14. Dimi Jottier & Bruno Heyndels, 2012. "Does social capital increase political accountability? An empirical test for Flemish municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 731-744, March.
    15. Brad Taylor, 2015. "Strategic and expressive voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 159-170, June.
    16. Steven Pressman, 2006. "Clap happy: Applause and the voting paradox," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 241-256.
    17. Hamlin, Alan & Jennings, Colin, 2007. "Leadership and conflict," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 49-68, September.
    18. Adam Pigoń, 2013. "What Affects Voter Turnout? Macro and Micro Evidence from Poland," Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis, issue 32, pages 77-105.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:69:y:1975:i:03:p:926-928_24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.