Authors: Hermet, Badie, Birnbaum & Braud
Summary: In a quiet brief entry the relationship between market and democracy is at first defined and then the more specific meaning of political market is described.
Many authors such as Hayek and Lindblom have founded their reflections on the "interdependence of democratic and economic mechamisms", given that a free and hence democratic society can exist and perpetuate itself only if embedded in market conditions.
The concept of political market, derived from the integration of utilitarianism (expecially the methodological individualism) and the rational choice approach, places governants as enterpreneurs and governed as consumers in a context lead by supply and demand logics. The goal for both is to maximize utility, and this approach inevitably leaves aside all ideological and value components.
This vision of political market, and expecially of electoral market, " where politicians act like enterpreneurs in concurrence between them and according to their rational logic " has its origins in the elitist theories (Gaetano Mosca above all) till the approaches of Schumpeter, Downs and Olson.