Institutional Rationality and Paradox of Voting

Abstract

There is no convincing explanation in public choice theory for the "paradox of voting". Despite the prediction that rational individuals will decide to abstain, lots of citizens still vote. The paradox of voting crops up when one tries to explain the decision to vote in an exclusively instrumental framework. In other words, the voting paradox arises because of the flawed notion of rationality held by public choice. By applying another concept of rationality, a deeper and more appropriate viewpoint can be made on how citizens make voting decisions and resolve the paradox of voting. It allows us to explain voting decisions as rational (the voter judges there to be good reasons for his decisions) without interpreting them as instrumentally motivated. In this research, the proposed strategies for solving the paradox of the voting are criticized based on logical reasoning. Then institutional rationality, which is compatible with the methodological approach of institutional economics, has been used to provide a new explanation of the voting decisions of individuals. The results of the theoretical analysis show that institutional rationality can help to solve the paradox of voting.

Keywords

• instrumental rationality
• institutional rationality
• voting behavior
• public choice theory