Is Minimax Regret Applicable to Voting Decisions?

Lawrence S. Mayer and I. J. Good

American Political Science Review, 1975, vol. 69, issue 3, 916-917

Abstract: In a recent article (“The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretic Analysis,” APSR, 68 [June, 1974], 525–536) John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina suggest that a (potential) voter may be rational in deciding whether to vote and yet not use the expected-utility calculus introduced for this purpose by Downs and Tullock and extended by Riker and Ordeshook. The authors suggest that a rational voter, in deciding whether to vote, may use the minimax regret criterion due to the late L. J. Savage. Define the regret of an Act A as the difference, if the true state of nature were known (in advance), between the best expected payoff that could be obtained and the expected payoff that would be obtained by act A. Then the minimax regret criterion requires the decision maker to act in such a way as to minimize the maximum regret that he can suffer. They also discuss the fact that the minimax regret criterion does not require the voter to supply any (objective or subjective) estimates of the probabilities associated with the various outcomes of the election. Thus they feel that it is an attractive criterion for decision making under “uncertainty” as opposed to decision making under “risk.”

Date: 1975
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