Keeping with the theme of rationality, the authors of this article have taken a different approach, arguing that actor’s make rational choices when voting. The paper seeks to demonstrate that social preferences are dominant over selfish preferences when at the ballot, that there is a feedback mechanism in rational socially motivated voting which effectively stabilises reasonable voter turnout and that there is a link between the ‘rational social-utility model of voter turnout’ out and the results of socially motivated ‘vote choice’ studies.

The authors argue against the traditional rational-choice models which assume individuals act selfishly, instead arguing that the rationality assumption can be separated from the selfishness assumption thus revealing that voting can be a rational act and that agents vote according to the expected social consequences. Additionally, agents perceive voting as a potential contribution to the greater good. The result of this theory is that vote choice models should work with social rather than selfish utility functions. By separating social and selfish preferences, which have traditionally thought of as being linked, it becomes clear that voting in large populations is perfectly rational. This is evidenced by small-scale contributions to political campaigns, active participation in opinion polls, increased voter turnout in relation to size and anticipated closeness of an election which are seemingly irrational phenomena considering the scope and significance of a single vote.

Another proposition made by the authors is that agents decide who to vote for based on social consideration. This is evidenced by ‘un-loyal’ strategic voting, voting based on issues which have no direct significance to the voter, but perhaps most importantly on surveys of voter motivations. The findings of these surveys suggest that voters will often voter’s preferences are strongly aligned with their views of what would be most beneficial to the country, rather than their own situation. It can thus be argued that voters think in terms of group and national benefits.

This article, when positioned amongst broader literature, makes some cont