Homo Ludens: Social rationality and political behavior

The most straightforward defense of political democracy is grounded in rational choice. Political democracy gives people power in public life parallel to that afforded by markets in private life: the power to turn their preferences into social outcomes. However, rational choice models of voter behavior dramatically underpredict voter turnout in all but the smallest elections. Fiorina (1990) has called this “the paradox that ate rational choice theory.” This anomaly is the centerpiece of Green and Shapiro's (1994) critique of rational choice methodology in political theory. This paper proposes a form of social rationality that strengthens the classical rational actor model. This concept explains many central statistical regularities concerning voter turnout and the historical regularities concerning collective action.