James Anthony Downs was born on November 21, 1930, in Evanston, Illinois.[1] His father was the founder of a consulting firm, Real Estate Research Corporation, and a frequent speaker on real estate related topics. He grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.[2]
He received a B.A. in international relations and political theory from Carleton College in 1952.[3] During this time he was the elected president of the college student body. He would later credit this experience for some of his interests in studying democracy.[2] He went to the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University on a scholarship to pursue his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics, obtaining his doctorate in 1956.[4]
He enlisted in the Navy and served as an intelligence officer when he was drafted. During this time he also served on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea. He quit the service after three years to join his father's consulting firm and also briefly served as a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago.[2]
He claimed that most voters have incomplete information when voting for political candidates in a democracy, and therefore will resort to economic issues of "how much government intervention in the economy there should be" and how parties will control this. Downs borrowed the curve from Harold Hotelling, who developed it to explain how grocery stores targeted customers. Downs's book has since become one of the most cited books in political science. His left–right axis model has been integrated into the median voter theory first articulated by Duncan Black.[8]
In An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), an early work in rational choice theory, Downs posited the paradox of voting, which claimed that significant elements of political life could not be explained in terms of voter self-interest. Downs showed that in democracies the aggregate distribution of political opinion forms a bell-shaped curve, with most voters possessing moderate opinions; he argued that this fact forces political parties in democracies to adopt centrist positions.[9]
Housing and traffic policy
Later, Downs concerned himself with housing policy,[10] writing about rent control and affordable housing. The Revolution in Real Estate Finance (1985) predicted a long-term housing slowdown and decrease in housing prices. Downs had involved himself with transportation economics.
In 1962, Downs published his Downs's Law of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion. This law states that on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity. Therefore, expanding the expressway network does not help against traffic jams. A complex set of forces lie behind this law, which were analyzed by presentation of a model of commuter decision-making and its underlying set of assumptions.[11] Sometimes this effect is referred to as Induced demand. By the same token, e.g. the 1965 Highway Capacity Manual stated that the capacity of a highway or motorway increases with decreasing traffic speed, until its maximum capacity is reached at about 50 km/h (30 mph).[12] (Cf. Braess's paradox.)
His book, Stuck in Traffic (1992), which detailed the economic disadvantages of traffic congestion and proposed road pricing as the only effective means of alleviating it, was denounced by traffic engineers for its insistence on the futility of congestion relief measures. However, enough of his gloomy predictions about congestion were proven correct that he successfully published a second edition, Still Stuck in Traffic (2004).[13][14]
He joined the Brookings Institution, an American thinktank, in 1977. He continued his work on housing policies and traffic issues management at the institute.[2][21]
He was the author or co-author of 24 books and more than 500 articles. His most influential books are An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy (1967); widely translated, both are credited as major influences on the public choice school of political economy.[2][22][23]
Downs met his first wife, Mary Katherine Watson, at a high-school prom. During this time, he challenged her to a game of chess, which she won. The couple were married in 1956. They had five children. Kay died in 1998 from ovarian cancer.[2] Downs later married his second wife Darian Dreyfuss Olsen.[2]
Anthony Downs died of natural causes in Bethesda, Maryland, on October 2, 2021.[1][2]
^Rogers, W. Hayward (June 1959). "Some Methodological Difficulties in Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy". American Political Science Review. 53 (2): 483–485. doi:10.2307/1952158. JSTOR1952158. S2CID147228236.
^Downs, Anthony (1977). "The Impact of Housing Policies on Family Life in the United States since World War II". Daedalus. 106 (2): 163–180. JSTOR20024482.
^Downs, Anthony (November 30, 2001). "Still Stuck in Traffic". Brookings. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019. Retrieved October 29, 2021.
^Rosenbloom, Sandra. "Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-hour Traffic Congestion". p. 458 in: "Reviews". Journal of the American Planning Association. 71 (4): 453–471. December 31, 2005. doi:10.1080/01944360508976716. S2CID220459957.