An Economic Theory of DemocracyThis book seeks to elucidate its subject-the governing of democratic state-by making intelligible the party politics of democracies. Downs treats this differently than do other students of politics. His explanations are systematically related to, and deducible from, precisely stated assumptions about the motivations that attend the decisions of voters and parties and the environment in which they act. He is consciously concerned with the economy in explanation, that is, with attempting to account for phenomena in terms of a very limited number of facts and postulates. He is concerned also with the central features of party politics in any democratic state, not with that in the United States or any other single country. |
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... marginal government dollar . He also pays a total cost in utility via taxes and restraints , and bears the marginal cost of the last tax dollar ( or loss of income from re- straint or inflation ) . Since a rational man remains in a ...
... marginal equilibrium in his deal- ings with government . Normally we can expect every man's marginal gain from ... cost , as- suming that the law of diminishing marginal returns held there . Or if he were enjoying a net gain at some ...
... marginal cost is the opportunity cost of acquiring this bit of information . Much of this cost can be shifted from the decision - maker to others , but the time for assimilation is a nontransferable cost . The decision - maker continues ...