Introduction

In the preceding three chapters, we have attempted to spell out our theory of electoral preference, derived from the standard axioms of rational actor theory. This theory is one part of a general rational actor theory of politics – and an important and much neglected part – but it is not the whole story. To develop a theory of electoral politics out of a theory of electoral preference requires us to connect electoral outcomes to voter preference in some way. It is necessary, in other words, to show how the interactions of individual voters operating within the institutional structure of electoral political process serve to generate political outcomes. In fact, orthodox public choice models have focused almost exclusively on this latter issue: In technical terms they have been primarily concerned with the properties of majority rule as an aggregation device. What these models have shown is that the connection between electoral outcomes and (revealed) voter preferences is, under the most plausible assumptions, complex and potentially perverse – perverse in the sense that majority rule can lead to electoral outcomes that no voter would desire, even if revealed electoral preferences were identical with the voters' true preferences over electoral outcomes.