Question

1. Give an explanation of the median voter model. Why might a minority say that democracy can never represent their interests?

Answer 1

Under direct democracy, there can be alternative voting rules. Majority rule is one where each individual has one vote and majority wins. In context of majority voting, median voter theorem emphasises that such a majority voting will ultimately lead to an outcome which will lead to the one most preferred by the median voter.

To expalin the concept, we can take an example of a hypothetical economy where three voters X, Y and Z have to make a choice about public spending. Let us assume that we have three types of budget activities, large, medium and small, and there are three voters in the economy A, B, and C. Let A be an individual who prefers large budget activity and B be an individual who prefers small budget activity. Let C be the medium budget individual. The activity each prefers puts at rank 1. The least preffered is given rank 3. The choices can be tabulated in the following way:

	A	B	C
Small	3	1	3
Medium	2	2	1
Large	1	3	2

Since more than two budget activities are involved, successive pairs must be voted on. From the perspective of A, L is better than M while M is better tahn S.

L>M>S

Similarly, for B, S>M>L.

As these are totally contrasting choices, we also observe the preference pattern of C, which is M>L>S

Taking the majority voting rule, between L and M, M will be chosen from choices of A and B and furthur between M and S, M will be chosen from choices of B and C. And again M will be chosen from the choices of A and C and eventually median voter will win.

A minority might say that democracy might never represent their interests because in majority voting rule, median voter always wins, A median choice lies between the extremes and will be chosen in a majority voting rule. Due to this,the choice of the minority might never be practiced and it might feel neglected or its interests might not be reflected in the decision making. The interests of the minority will come at the extreme ends and the median choices will be selected.