9 Information is a valuable commodity within a public choice model of political decision-making. Simply, public choice is defined as the economic study of non-market decision making, or simply the application of economics to political science. The basic behavioral postulate of public choice, consistent with liberal economics, is that people are rational, egoistic, individuals who seek to maximize their preferences or utility. From this perspective, public choice is situated within the stream of philosophy extending from Thomas Hobbes and Benedict Spinoza, and within the political science of James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville. In a liberal democracy, citizens rule at one remove from executive decision-making.
Citizens exercise their sovereignty in electing representatives.
In this delegation the Member of Parliament, as both representative and legislator, is granted the formal right to decide in the public interest with legitimate public authority. Further, according to Sartori, in a liberal democracy voters must have an expectation of alternation in elected public office holders and agreed upon rules for open competition in acquiring the right to decide. This competition is managed through an electoral system, which is essentially a set of unchanged election rules under which one or more successive elections are conducted in a given democracy. In the democratic process, delegated decision-making authority is held publicly accountable in the first degree within rational codes based on the rule and spirit of law and partisan debate. Ultimate recall power rests in the potential of collective acts of electoral retribution, that is electoral defeat and loss of office.