Politics as charity

Abstract

The cost of voting may exceed the expected value of the policy changes that a marginal vote might make, causing many people to believe that voting is irrational. The article constructs a model likening voting to charity and posits that it might be rational to engage in politics to affect change due to the consequentialist potential benefit that may come from doing so. The author notes that a detailed analysis of electoral campaigning, political spending, and the link between those and policy outcomes would be necessary to make such a determination. – AI-generated abstract.