Rational Foundations of Democratic Politics

This 2003 text uses the theory of rational choice to explore the 'foundations' of democracy. The authors consider diverse problems of modern democratic politics such as the importance of civic virtue, negative advertising, the interaction of democracy and markets, and the role of constitutions and civil society in sustaining democracy.

Democracy is widely accepted today, perhaps as never before, as the most suitable form of government. But what is democracy, and does it always produce good government? Democracy is often associated with the existence of competitive elections. But theory and experience suggest that these are not sufficient for democracy to function reasonably well. In this book, which was originally published in 2003, a number of experts from North America and Europe use a rational choice approach to understand the 'foundations' of democracy - what makes democracy successful, and why. In doing so, they consider diverse problems of democratic governance such as the importance of morals or virtue in political life, negative advertising, the role of social capital and civil society in sustaining democracy, the constitutional and cultural prerequisites of democracy, and the interaction of democracy and markets.