democracy political liberalism manipulation

books:

3 reviews
William H. Riker

Yale University Press, 1986

Wonderful work
I read this when I was in high school, I not only found it easy to comprehend (which says alot given the state of education in this country), but narrated quite well. Riker provides both access to the material without requiring a graduate degree, but provides new material to even those with graduate degrees. A must read for those who wish to know how bills really become or don't become laws.

Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice

3 reviews
William H. Riker

Waveland Press, 1988

A great introduction to public choice theory
Public choice theory is just full of interesting and counterintuitive results. It's most famous result, Arrow's impossibility theorem, says that democratic decision making over a fixed set of choices cannot be guaranteed to produce rational results--majorities might just prefer A to B, B to C, and also C to A. Furthermore, the only way to guarantee rational results is a dictatorship. These are ...