Expressive Voting - Public Choice Theory - Geoffrey Brennan

When you vote in an election, what are you really doing? Professor Geoffrey Brennan challenges students to question standard assumptions about what voters are doing when they vote. He argues that voters don’t actually "choose" candidates in the normal sense of that word, since a single vote almost never determines the outcome of an election. Prof. Brennan argues that each vote, by itself, is more like cheering for a sports team, and that this has important implications for the workings of democratic politics. He stresses the importance of understanding elections and other democratic processes as they actually are, not as we wish them to be, in order to work toward better policies and governance.

Prof. Brennan is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Australian National University. From 1976-1983 Geoffrey was Professor in the Public Choice Center at Virginia Tech, where he worked extensively with (1987) Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. Since 2005 he has spent a semester each year in the joint Duke/UNC PPE program as the General Director.

This video is part of a series exploring major concepts in public choice theory. It is also part of a larger series about foundational topics in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) courses. Videos in the series feature professors who teach in university PPE programs.

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