An Economic Model of Representative Democracy

Timothy Besley and Stephen Coate

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997, vol. 112, issue 1, 85-114

Abstract: This paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy-making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office. The approach has a number of attractive features. First, it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by, as well as of, the people. Second, the model is analytically tractable, being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally. Third, it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy.

Date: 1997
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