A note on political participation as consumption behavior

In this paper we have isolated the impact that changes in the relative price of voting have on political participation by finding the residual between the gross effect and the pure income effect. The results obtained by this procedure indicate that the substitution effect is negative. In sum, our findings suggest that political participation is a superior good in the sense that total consumption increases with income, even if the price rises proportionately; but that this rate of growth is no where near as fast as it would be with a fixed price, and therefore the substitution effect curves in the usual way. This leaves the basic mystery of why participation rises with income intact, but it at least eliminates one of the subsidiary problems. Copyright Center for Study of Public Choice Virginia Polytechnic Instutute and State University 1977