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Foot voting is expressing one's preferences through one's actions, by voluntarily participating in or withdrawing from an activity, group, or process; especially, physical migration to leave a situation one does not like, or to move to a situation one regards as more beneficial. People who engage in foot voting are said to "vote with their feet". Legal scholar
Ilya Somin Ilya Somin (born 1973) is a law professor at George Mason University, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a blogger for the Volokh Conspiracy, and a former co-editor of the '' Supreme Court Economic Review'' (2006–2013). His research focu ...
has described foot voting as "a tool for enhancing political freedom: the ability of the people to choose the political regime under which they wish to live". Communist leader Vladimir Lenin commented, "They voted with their feet," regarding Russian soldiers deserting the army of the
Tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...
. The concept has also been associated with
Charles Tiebout Charles Mills Tiebout ( "TEE-bow") (1924–1968) was an American economist and geographer most known for his development of the Tiebout model, which suggested that there were actually non-political solutions to the free rider problem in local go ...
, who pioneered the concept (although he did not use the ''term'' "foot voting") in a 1956 paper, and with Ronald Reagan, who advocated migration between states of the United States as a solution to unsatisfactory local conditions.


Law and politics

Legal scholar
Ilya Somin Ilya Somin (born 1973) is a law professor at George Mason University, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a blogger for the Volokh Conspiracy, and a former co-editor of the '' Supreme Court Economic Review'' (2006–2013). His research focu ...
has argued that foot voting requires far less information (on the part of the citizens engaging in it) to be exercised effectively than does literal voting at the ballot box; that foot voters are more strongly motivated to acquire relevant information than are ballot-box voters; and that decentralized federalism promotes the welfare of citizens because it facilitates foot voting. Somin has also used foot voting to make a case for changes in
international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
to allow easier
migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...
across international
border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders ca ...
s. Legal scholars Roderick M. Hills, Jr., and Shitong Qiao have used China as a case study to argue that foot voting is ineffective unless meaningful ballot-box voting is also in place. Somin has rebutted this critique.


Culture

Models from theoretical biology have been applied to elucidate the causal relationships between foot voting and the dissemination of human cultural characteristics.


Examples


United States

One of the clearest examples of foot voting is the mass exodus of movers out of California to other states. In 2020, 650,000 people left California, a net loss of 135,000 people. Some of the motivations spurring people to move out of California and to other states are the pursuit of lower taxes, more affordable housing, and fewer regulations on businesses. Conversely, an example of a movement of people moving to a place rather than from a place is the Free State Project. The Free State Project (FSP) is an American political migration movement founded in 2001 to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state ( New Hampshire, was selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas. By concentrating on a single state rather than being dispersed over several states, libertarians have seen a lot of electoral wins in New Hampshire. For example, 150 representatives in the NH state house were ranked as an A- or above by the
New Hampshire Liberty Alliance The New Hampshire Liberty Alliance (NHLA) is a nonpartisan, libertarian coalition in New Hampshire. The organization supports libertarian candidates for state and local offices, and other libertarian causes and organizations. Just before the Nov ...
in 2021. As of March of 2022, approximately 6,232 participants have moved to New Hampshire for the Free State Project.


See also

* Dollar voting * ''
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty ''Exit, Voice, and Loyalty'' (1970) is a treatise written by Albert O. Hirschman. The work hinges on a conceptual ultimatum that confronts consumers in the face of deteriorating quality of goods: either '' exit'' or ''voice''. The book has been ...
'' * Free State Project *
Human capital flight Human capital flight is the emigration or immigration of individuals who have received advanced training at home. The net benefits of human capital flight for the receiving country are sometimes referred to as a "brain gain" whereas the net cos ...
*
Jurisdiction shopping Jurisdictional arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of discrepancies between competing legal jurisdictions. It takes its name from arbitrage, the practice in finance of purchasing a good at a lower price in one market and selling it at a h ...
* Panarchism * Revealed preference *
Tiebout model The Tiebout model, also known as Tiebout sorting, Tiebout migration, or Tiebout hypothesis, is a positive political theory model first described by economist Charles Tiebout in his article "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures" (1956). The essence ...
* Freedom of movement *
Illegal emigration Illegal emigration is departure from a country in violation of emigration laws. Countries often seek to regulate who departs a country for diverse reasons, such as stopping criminals from leaving, preventing labor shortages and capital flight, and ...
*
Republikflucht ''Republikflucht'' ( German for "desertion from the republic") was the colloquial term in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for illegal emigration to West Germany, West Berlin, and non-Warsaw Pact countries; the official term was ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foot Voting Voting theory Psephology Internal migration