The problem of preferences in democracy: a bounded racionality approach

Abstract

One of the challenges face contemporary democracies is linked to the individuals preferences. It has been subject of politics theory and reciently differents legislative reforms in Europe have tried to solve the problem through new mechanism involving citizenship directly in public managment. The aim pursued is to create the conditions to citizens participate into policy-making (getting involved in deliberation and decision making proccess). From democracy economics theory is often questioned the participative models, because, it is said, through these models people can not get involved in a rational decision making procces. The citizens are affected by a huge constrains as information scarce, invariabilty of opinions and believes or because of their non proffesional feature. These elements are taken to denied the viability of citizenship direct participation. In this article, we approch this controversy from a differnt point of view. New models of rationality (bouded rationality, H. Simon) has appeared during the last decades which challence somo basic Rational choice hypothesis. H. Simon states the rational agents adapt their decisions taking into account enviromental task and the information available in it. We will analyce political participation from the conception of bonded rationality in order to test participation relevance on public regulated scenary.