An Economic Theory of Democracy

An Economic Theory of Democracy is a standout example of the behavioralist school of social science, which was at the peak of its influence when Downs published the book in 1957. Behavioralism is an approach which seeks to quantify social activity, and politics in particular, within the terms of objective scientific principles and facts.

In the 1950s, there were several factors which came together to promote behavioralist thought. The strongest influence was the aftermath of the Second World War and the enormous impact it continued to have on culture, society, and politics, and on socio-political ideas. The extremes of the Nazi regime in Western Europe and Communism in Eastern Europe were viewed by political elites in the US as the result of ideological excess, prompting a search for a rational approach to politics which could undermine the efforts of demagogues to disrupt global order and peace. Behavioralism borrowed from economics and psychology to inform its rational view of politics. By the 1950s, the work of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others had helped to introduce psychoanalysis into the academic mainstream, and a theory of the mind as a key to human decision-making promised a scientific approach to politics that, proponents felt, could be universally applied to all societies and political regimes. Behavioralism moved away from traditional cultural models of human behavior and permitted a model of capitalist, democratic psychology to be presented as a neutral and universal model of political behavior around the world.

The war had driven an enormous expansion in US government bureaucracy, which the corporate world learned to mimic. The public and private sector harnessed technological innovations to develop highly sophisticated methods for aggregating information and developing policies, giving rise to industries with the sole purpose of gathering information for various political and economic actors. The United States emerged from the war as an economic and political colossus, and needed a data-driven approach to capture and drive its growing economy and increasing international responsibilities. Downs served as a consultant to the government on urban development and its consequences for citizens, giving him an insight into the increasingly empirical approach to public policy.   

In the 1950s, Democrats and Republicans had reached a moderate consensus and both had solicited Dwight Eisenhower to serve as their presidential nominee in 1952. In contrast, multiparty systems in France, Italy, and other war torn countries gave rise to ideological struggles between polar opposites, as nations struggled to find solutions for the internal disruption, destruction, and division caused by years at war. The emerging field of comparative politics expressed a desire to explain these different outcomes, usually looking to the unique histories, cultures, and social structures of these different states for answers. In contrast, Downs and his fellow behavioralists sought a unified theory of rationality that was capable of explaining all such variations. Their work answered a need for reassurance in the aftermath of war: To understand the rise of populist ideology as a universal sequence of rational and measurable behaviors was to contain, demystify and—it was hoped—prevent such extremes in future.