ABSTRACT
This chapter explores conceptions of citizenship that assume that citizens are primarily self-interested and their impact on the ideals of democracy. Though they share a basic commitment to the idea that citizens are self-interested, they differ in the roles they assign to citizens and to the complementary parts of political decisionmaking and in the extent to which they suggest that the democratic ideals can be met. The chapter discusses three models of citizenship and democracy that are founded on self-interest: the formalist, the interest group pluralist, and the neo-liberal accounts. There are two different approaches to the economic theory of democracy. There are theories that justify basic political principles on the basis of what rational, self-interested individuals would choose in some hypothetical situation. The chapter discusses the second critical approach only. It shows that these theories are self-defeating in that the institutions they justify are not stable under the assumption of self-interest.
