Hiring and Firing Public Officials : Rethinking the Purpose of Elections

Justin Buchler

ISBN 10: 0199759979 / ISBN 13: 9780199759972

Editore: OXFORD UNIV PR, 2011

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - Conventional theories of elections hold that an election is analogous to a consumer product market. According to the market paradigm, voters are consumers, candidates are competing firms, and an election is a market in which voters exchange votes for policy by voting for the candidates whose policies they prefer. According to this logic, a healthy democracy requires frequent competitive elections. The market analogy underlies decades of electoral theory, but in Hiring and Firing Public Officials, Justin Buchler contends that it does not capture the real nature of elections. In fact, our widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of electoral politics derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what elections are and what purpose they serve. As Justin Buchler shows, an election is a mechanism by which voters hire and fire public officials. It is not a consumer product market--it is a single employment decision. Thus, the health of democracy depends not on regular competitive elections, but on posing a credible threat to fire public officials who do not perform their jobs well. However, the purpose of that threat is to force public officials to act as faithful public servants so that they do not have to be fired. Thus, competitive elections, by most definitions, are indicative of a failure of the democratic system.

Codice articolo 9780199759972

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Hiring and Firing Public Officials : Rethinking the Purpose of Elections
• Editore: OXFORD UNIV PR
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0199759979
• ISBN 13: 9780199759972
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 234 L x 156 A x 16 P (millimetri) 234 millimetri di larghezza per 156 millimetri di altezza per 16 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 471 grammi

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Riassunto

Conventional theories of elections hold that an election is analogous to a consumer product market. According to the market paradigm, voters are consumers, candidates are competing firms, and an election is a market in which voters exchange votes for policy by voting for the candidates whose policies they prefer. According to this logic, a healthy democracy requires frequent competitive elections. The market analogy underlies decades of electoral theory, but in Hiring and Firing Public Officials, Justin Buchler contends that it does not capture the real nature of elections. In fact, our widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of electoral politics derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what elections are and what purpose they serve. As Justin Buchler shows, an election is a mechanism by which voters hire and fire public officials. It is not a consumer product market-it is a single employment decision. Thus, the health of democracy depends not on regular competitive elections, but on posing a credible threat to fire public officials who do not perform their jobs well. However, the purpose of that threat is to force public officials to act as faithful public servants so that they do not have to be fired. Thus, competitive elections, by most definitions, are indicative of a failure of the democratic system.

Informazioni sull'autore

Justin Buchler is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of several articles about the negative consequences of competitive elections, including, "The Social Sub-optimality of Competitive Elections," which won the 2007 Gordon Tullock Award for Best Paper By A Young Scholar.