Retrospective voting definition
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Anthony Downs
American economist (1930–2021)
For the race track, see Anthony Downs (race track).
Anthony Downs (November 21, 1930 – October 2, 2021) was an American economist specializing in public policy and public administration. His research focuses included political choice theory, rent control, affordable housing, and transportation economics. He wrote a number of books including, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy (1967), which have been major influences on the public choice school of political economy. In Downs's Law of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (1962), he predicted that expanding expressways could not reduce traffic congestion, since demand would increase as well, and that reducing speeds increases capacity.
He served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., member of faculty at the University of Chicago and a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. Downs was also an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Early life
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Downs: An economic theory of democracy
Disclaimer. Don't rely on these old notes in lieu of reading the literature, but they can jog your memory. As a grad student long ago, my peers and I collaborated to write and exchange summaries of political science research. I posted them to a wiki-style website. "Wikisum" is now dead but archived here. I cannot vouch for these notes' accuracy, nor can I say who wrote them.
Downs. 1957. An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.
In Brief
Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout. Particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote. This conclusion, especially as elaborated on by Riker and Ordeshook (1968) has shifted the attention of modern political scientists from explaining why people don't vote to explaining why they do.
This summary pays greatest attention to chapters 3 and 14 of Downs's book.
The Basic Logic of Voting
Downs starts from this basic model: In a world of perfect information, each
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Anthony Downs was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as a consultant to many of the nation's largest corporations and public institutions, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the White House. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the National Commission on Urban Problems in 1967, and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp appointed him to the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing in 1989. He was officer or trustee of General Growth Properties and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He was the author or co-author of 24 books and over 500 articles. His most influential books are An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy (1967); widely translated, both are credited as major influences on the public choice school of political economy. Downs was also concerned with housing policy, writing about rent control and housing affordability. The Revolution in Real Estate Finance (1985) predicted a long-term housing slowdown and decrease in housing prices. Most recently, Downs involved
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