This is an interesting take on the problems with democracy from an economists point of view. Perhaps I have a bit of "democratic fundamentalism" myself, that I'm not sure I agree with some of the fixes to democracy, but I do agree with many of the errors cited. The idea that people rationally choose to be irrational about politics make sense to me. I'm just uncertain that the suggestions by the author will help improve government. ( )

The Myth of the Rational Voter is partially a book explaining economist Bryan Caplan’s economic model for voting, and partially it’s a polemic arguing for elitist views regarding the intelligence of the average U.S. citizen. As a super-smart citizen with just enough information to be dangerous, I’m partial to the argument. Caplan’s model and argument are internally consistent, but I don’t think he’s founded his erector set theory on as firm a ground as he describes. Whether it’s all true or not can only be seen by further research or events.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

The author calls a spade a spade in ways that no politician ever would (if they knew the mic was on, that is)--voters are not just rationally ignorant, they are irrationally daft. And that includes you.

In precis: rational ignorance is not the cause of democratic folly, because via the wisdom of crowds, the smartest non-ignorant voter on every issue would prevail over the randomised noise, and the result would be policymaking at its finest. Instead, the errors are not random, but reflect the insidious working of Caplan's four main biases that voters have: 1) the market does not know best all that often, 2) foreigners are foes, 3) jobs are better than efficiency and 4) yesterday was better than today. Apparently these systematic biases previal because they feel good, and the return of good feeling is demanded by folks, so they supply the biases to get it. From another ten miles high, this actually all seems optimal (the people get what they want), but only in the same way as belief in Santa or faith healing are similarly demanded because they feel good to the mistaken.

And it's less innocuous than that too (as may be the faith-healing market)--if special interest groups (those poised to reap concentrated gains) can exploit the rationally not-bothered public (they pay diffuse costs), then they sure can do a job on the irrationally wrong public. Or so it would seem. Mancur Olson's thesis on collective action (renamed "classical public choice") gets an airing for this important reason.

What's the solution? It would seem that some of it is to let the market decide more often, and some of it is perhaps more devolution of policy to arms-length technocrats. So Churchill's proclamation that democracy is the "worst" form of government "except for all the others" seems to get the response: "Not always". And of course, democratic societies already know this to be true, since they have independent judiciaries and monetary authorities. However, this reviewer did not get to sense an abundamce of solutions. And at times, she wondered if the text was edging towards rule by Plato's philosopher kings (except that they would more likely be economist kings).

In that regard, it is possible to run away with the idea that the author is merely lamenting the failure of electorates to choose policies that he approves of. Non-economists would be quite likely to get rather irritated by chapter three, which had a persistent tendency to give this reviewer the impression that if she wasn't one, then by default her views were less correct. She suspects that this charge is going to seriously limit the penetration of Caplan's thesis in popular assessment, even if she can get over it herself. But in doing this, Caplan appears to trip himself up a little, since the rest of the text is noticably dotted with pockets of defence of dismal scientists against the foes he apparently imagines are already banging at the door. More likely--and this is unfortunate--they stopped reading some time ago.

Francesca ( )

Caplan's thesis is really wonderful. Here's my summary. Democracies adopt stupid economic policies because politicians take their cues from voters, and voters are not only ignorant (which would be okay, coming out in the wash) but actually biased. The tragic thing is that they are rational to be biased: they have preferences over their beliefs (it feels good to believe certain things, false things, about the world) that are not offset by any substantial costs to get the truth right in political matters since the odds that their vote will be decisive in a large democracy are nil. As he puts it, "There is about as much intrinsic motivation to understand economics as there is to take out the garbage." ( )

Caplan begins by outlining current theories of voter behavior that emphasize voter rationality + voter ignorance, and lays out persuasive objections to this view. First, he describes and provides empirical evidence for four systematic biases of the general public. He refers to these as antimarket bias, antiforeign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias. He explains that once you take into account the fact that voting is unlike shopping and more like a commons, it makes perfect economic sense for voters to be irrational. In this case, citizens get a feel-good benefit voting according to these biases and only pay a tiny price for choosing poor economic policy (because their individual vote is so unlikely to decide things).
Caplan does a good job of laying out the facts and the theory behind his argument, to which I am sympathetic. My only regret is that he doesn't make more recommendations in the conclusion to the book, but there is a clear need for further work in this area. ( )