Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies In Political Behavior)

Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies In Political Behavior)

Why our belief in government by the people is unrealistic?and what we can do about itDemocracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens.Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters?even those who are well informed and politically engaged?mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly.Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.Review"Their writing is clear, concise, and appropriately whimsical on occasion. Certain to become a classic.",Choice"The folk theory of American democracy is that citizens deliberate on the issues and choose a candidate. That is false. The truth, as political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels describe inDemocracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, is that voters are tribalistic."---Jamelle Bouie, Slate"[Achen and Bartels] argue, contrary to the standard folk theory, that individuals are group-minded partisan members, and their reasons for voting in certain ways are based mainly on ideological or partisan grounds. Thus, group identity has more of an impact on electoral choice than policy. . . . [A] welcome addition to the literature on democratic theory and electoral politics."---Spiro Metaxas, Political Studies Review"In Democracy for Realists, Achen and Bartels explain that deep-seated social identities and group affiliations motivate political action far more than individual rationality does. They convincingly debunk what they term the ?folk theory' of electoral democracy, an idealized view in which informed voters assess candidates on the basis of their own policy preferences or ideology and the leaders they elect then respond to the wishes of the majority, producing public policies that meet voters? demands. Drawing on a vast literature, Achen and Bartels argue that, in fact, most people are uninterested in politics and poorly informed about issues."---Suzanne Mettler, Foreign Affairs"The 2016 election cycle has confounded a good deal of scholarship and punditry so far. But one book that's coming out smelling like a rose is Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels' new bookDemocracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. This book's novel argument is that we've been thinking about democracy all wrong."---Seth Masket, Pacific Standard"Democracy for Realists, by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, shows that however cynical you are about the democratic process, it's worse than you think. All the flaws in cognition that psychologists have been teaching for decades make a mockery of the folk theory that democracy produces responsive governments."--