IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/kyklos/v23y1970i4p736-755.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Models Of Perfect Competition And Pure Democracy

Author

Listed:
  • Bruno S. Frey

Abstract

In the ‘Economic Theory of Politics’ the model of pure democracy has the same importance as the model of perfect competition in economic theory. The author shows that both ‘ideal’ models use almost identical assumptions with respect to social actors (vote‐, profit‐, and utility‐maximizers) and social states. Both guarantee a Pareto‐optimal allocation of resources. In the equilibrium of a two party democracy the same programs are advanced and put into reality. It follows that in equilibrium (and only there) nobody votes. Extensions of the simple two‐party model to include various parties and induced preferences of voters by the parties destroy some of the simple results: sometimes no equilibrium exists, it is unstable or does not conform to observations of reality. Finally, democracy's allocation with generally more equal distribution of income than through the price system, is destroyed when the declamatory assumption of ‘one man—one vote’ is given up and the inequality of political starting positions is taken account of.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno S. Frey, 1970. "Models Of Perfect Competition And Pure Democracy," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(4), pages 736-755, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:kyklos:v:23:y:1970:i:4:p:736-755
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6435.1970.tb01042.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1970.tb01042.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1970.tb01042.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mitja Stefancic & Silvio Goglio & Ivana Catturani, 2019. "Democratic Governance Mechanisms in Cooperative Banks: A Reassessment," Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity, European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises, vol. 8(1), pages 22-41.
    2. Z. Spindler, 1982. "The overstated economy: Implications of positive public economics for national accounting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 181-196, January.
    3. Alexandre Chirat, 2020. "Démocratie de la demande versus démocratie de l’offre : Reconstruction et interprétation des analogies démocratie-marché," Working Papers 2020-10, CRESE.
    4. Blankart, Charles B., 1975. "Neuere Ansätze zur Erklärung des Wachstums der Staatsausgaben: Ein interpretierender Überblick," Discussion Papers, Series I 67, University of Konstanz, Department of Economics.

    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:bla:kyklos:v:23:y:1970:i:4:p:736-755. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0023-5962 .

    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.