The Demand for Government Policies

Abstract

Chapter 4 discussed why citizens engage in political action and chapter 5 examined the various political activities or instruments which these same citizens can undertake or use in an effort to alter the amounts of public policies supplied by the government and thus bring them to levels that are more in accordance with their own preferences. This chapter focuses on the costs of engaging in the activities described in the last chapter and analyzes how political participation changes with changes in these costs. In effect, this chapter, building on the material of the last two, is intended to provide an institutional theory of the demand for public policies.