Democracy Defended

A theoretical and empirically spirited defence of democratic governance.

Gerry Mackie (Author)

9780521534314, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 November 2003

500 pages, 5 b/w illus. 59 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 3.2 cm, 0.797 kg

'Mackie's volume is a path-breaking, thorough, and innovative overview of the subject of social choice and its implications for understanding democracy. It is made up of various lines of analysis including historical interpretation, a review of massive numbers of statistical studies and a careful analysis of numerous aspects of the proof of Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. It will be 'must reading' for all who wish to understand democracy given the work in the social choice field over the last 50 years.' Social Justice Research

Is there a public good? A prevalent view in political science is that democracy is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. Such scepticism began with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, and continued most notably with Arrow and Riker in the twentieth century. In this powerful book, Gerry Mackie confronts and subdues these long-standing doubts about democratic governance. Problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable, he argues, to be of normative concern. Mackie also examines every serious empirical illustration of cycling and instability, including Riker's famous argument that the US Civil War was due to arbitrary dimensional manipulation. Almost every empirical claim is erroneous, and none is normatively troubling, Mackie says. This spirited defence of democratic institutions should prove both provocative and influential.

1. A long, dark shadow over democratic politics
2. The doctrine of democratic irrationalism
3. Is democratic voting inaccurate?
4. The Arrow general possibility theorem
5. Is democracy meaningless? Arrow's condition of unrestricted domain
6. Is democracy meaningless? Arrow's condition of the independence of irrelevant alternatives
7. Strategic voting and agenda control
8. Multidimensional chaos
9. Assuming irrational actors: the Powell Amendment
10. Assuming irrational actors: the Depew amendment
11. Unmanipulating the manipulation: the Wilmot proviso
12. Unmanipulating the manipulation: the election of Lincoln
13. Antebellum politics concluded
14. More of Riker's cycles debunked
15. Other cycles debunked
16. New dimensions
17. Plebiscitarianism against democracy
18. Democracy resplendent.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA], Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Political science & theory [JPA]