POL 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Transaction Cost, Direct Democracy, Collective Action
29 Sep 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Transaction costs - time, effort, & expense of resources to come to a collective decision (electoral system, referendum [vote]) Conformity costs - cost of conforming to the collective decision (speeding tickets, prison) ~ cost of you conforming to the law ~ solution to the collective action problem. Minorities (in thoughts/position, not gender) in general pay highest highest conformity costs. Direct democracy: higher the transaction cost ~ lower the conformity cost (b/c ppl get what they want) Collective decision of the society is the law. Harvey milk ~ 1st openly gay to run for a position in the san francisco board of supervisors. Won the second time he ran ~ but voters preferences did not change but how they counted up the votes changed (mechanism changed) At large - city wide list system ~ very democratic. Us has have had 2 us constitutions ~ fucked up the 1st one.
