Putting Choice Before Democracy

Putting Choice Before Democracy Synopsis

Shows how rational choice theory's critique and justification of democracy fails in its project to recast democratic theory.

In this critique of rational choice theory, Emily Hauptmann explores the idea central to the theory, namely, that democracy can best be explained in terms of an economic conception of choice. Her argument turns on the claims that the choices we face as citizens are not reducible to the choices we face as consumers and that democracy cannot be reduced to a series of choices, economic or otherwise.