a two party system, general equilibrium and the voters' paradox

abstract (introduction; abridged): this work was helped considerably by the work of anthony downs. although the models constructed are somewhat more formal and the conclusions reached are somewhat different the approach to the study of the political-economy of a democracy with competitive markets is much the same. the investigation is limited to the study of a two party system in a very rudimentary form operating in an environment in which the average individual acts as a passive voter (i.e. does not form coalitions, or act in any way other than to individually use his vote to maximize his own welfare). the individual also acts as a price taker in that part of society which can be represented as a competitive market. the model presented here is stripped down to its most abstract form. no attempt is made to defend its "realism". obviously much more detail and many more "facts" of political and economic life must be added if it is to be presented as a model with immediate worth in application. this is not the intention. the goal is to explore the implications of the highly simplified political model added to a general equilibrium economic model. because the assumptions made to construct the model are critical and may be controversial a detailed discussion of them is now given. much of the writing on political parties, elections and government has been devoted to detailed description of process. attention is paid here to static models only. (...)