Downs’ Contribution To The Theory Of Public Choice

Downs makes a great contribution to the theory of public choice.He is the first scholar who uses the "hypothesis of rational man" to study on the behaviors of the political parties,government,voters and discuss on the problem of the equilibrium of the political market.Within the framework of Western democracy, Downs believes that the voter aims to maximize his utility;the party’s goal is to be elected;the government’s objective is to get the supports of the voters. However,the political parties and voters always face with the uncertainty.Therefore, ideology which can reduce the uncertainty is a very useful tool both for the political parties and voters.At the framework of "one-party" democratic, Downs finds that the number of the political parties largely depend on the the voter distribution which is a very important political parameter.The followers conduct more researches on the basis of the work of DownsSome scholars find that the rational voters may not choose to go to the polling booth.However, in reality, in many cases,there are a large number of voters casting their votes.It means that the paradox of voting does exist. Many scholars study on the factors that influence the behaviors of the voters.They find that the psychological factors of social responsibility seems to play a crucial role in the behavior of voting.Downs explains the behavior logic of the political parties, voters and the government, but he does not explain how exactly they fight for their own interests, nor does he explain what kind of results that these actions will bring about. Rent-seeking theory suggests that the government may "set the renf" to intervene the economy and get the benefits from the interests.The theory of the government output shows that the government always tries to maximize its budget.Therefore,the government tends to not only hide the cost of the output but also to pursue its own scale.The model of political party competition is under a assumption of the single peak preferences and single policy. On the basis of the work of Downs,the followers relax the assumptions for further study. In the condition of uncertainty, single peak preferences and two policies,"cycle" phenomenon occurs,which means that the policy of a political party can always be defeated by another party.In the condition of uncertainty, single peak preferences and double policy assumption, some scholars find that cycle exists only in a small area.Some scholars take the rate of inflation and the unemployment as the two policies for their researches.Some other scholars believe that the ideology is as important as the macroeconomic indicators,they claim that the left-wing parties pay more attention to the rate of unemployment and the right-wing political parties pay more attention to the rate of inflation. There are also some scholars believing that we should choose the level of support the transfer, GDP, the level of taxation and others as the policies.The theory of public choice tries to explore whether the government can effectively provide the public goods, eliminate the externality.However, before Downs, the theory of public choice mainly discusses in the framework of the direct democracy, Downs is the first scholar who uses the "hypothesis of rational man" to study on the behaviors of the political parties,government,voters and discuss on the problem of the equilibrium of the political market.Downs expands the scope of the study of economics,and makes a great contribution to the modern economics.China’s reform and opening up has made great achievements, but in the process of economic restructuring,it also has many problems including the economic structure problems and corruption.We can learn a lot from Downs and his followers. First, China should not copy the western model of democracy. Second, China needs to effectively establish the supervising mechanisms on the political power. This paper argues that China’s reform has entered into deep water,China needs to make great efforts to solve many problems including the lack of rules of law,the problems of local governments and state-owned enterprises. Finally, it must be recognized that the reform is a "step by step" process,it is very important to improve the citizenship.