Book review: Democracy for Realists

A recently published book, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments (Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels (“A&B”), Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, April 2016) analyzes data on the nature of voting and democracy in America and other countries from the early 1900’s through 2012. Much of they find isn’t anywhere close to what people believe about the elements of democracy under the folk theory, e.g., where sovereignty resides, “the will of the people”, or the true nature of voters’ role in democracy.

A&B, both social scientists, have found that most American's vision of what democracy is has little to do with the reality of democracy. Instead of ideology and logic defining voter's political beliefs, party affiliation and voting preferences, the evidence points instead to people's social identities. Due to their misunderstanding, frustrated voters try to “fix” certain aspects of democracy by, e.g., imposing term limits or resorting to state level ballot measures. Analysis of the data suggests that those measures mostly backfire and tend to shift power from voters to special interests. The key lesson this book has to teach is that fixing democracy requires understanding it first.

The folk theory of democracy

The common perception holds that the people elect their leaders at the polls and then hold them accountable for representing their will. The folk theory is appealing because it puts the will of the people and their interests at the heart of government. Sovereignty resides with the people who control the agenda. Voters act as government watchdogs to enforce shared values and curb abuses. Voters correct their mistakes or punish failure at the polls by changing governments, while rewarding competence with continued time in power.

My guess is that many readers would at least suspect that the there’s something not quite right with the folk theory. For example, many people believe that one or both parties and the will of the people are often or usually co-opted by special interests backed by money in politics. That’s out of synch with the common perception of democracy. Those people would be correct in their suspicions.

If the current election season is any indication, most Americans are pretty unhappy with the state of affairs in their democracy. They see something wrong. So do A&B:

“One consequence of our reliance on old definitions is that the modern American does not look at democracy before he defines it; he defines it first and then is confused by what he sees. We become cynical about democracy because the public does not act the way the simplistic definition of democracy says it should act, or we try to whip the public into doing things it does not want to do, is unable to do, and has too much sense to do. The crisis here is not a crisis in democracy but a crisis in theory.”

Give that observation a moment to sink in. Don’t overlook the phrase “is unable to do.” That reflects the reality that most people (> 90% ?) don’t pay attention to politics, often can’t pay attention and are biologically too limited to understand what’s going on even if they tried:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

From the biological point of view, that’s reality, not a criticism of people or their limitations. Almost everything in politics, if not everything, is more complex than people give it credit for. And, most if it is either at least partially hidden from the public, distorted in the name of “free speech”, or both.

It is hard to understate the role of cognitive biology and associated human behavior in politics. A&B point out that “a democratic theory worthy of serious social influence must engage with the findings of modern social science.” Although A&B’s book dissects democratic theory and analyzes mountains of science and history data from the last hundred years or so, the exercise is really about analyzing the role of human cognitive biology as it pertains to how democracy works. Our beliefs about democracy are shaped much more by human biology than political theory.

In Democracy for Realists, A&B assert that democratic theory has to adapt to the reality of what democracy is. That directly reflects the necessity of understanding human biology by analyzing the data.

Two points exemplify the case that this is about human biology first and what political theory needs to do to be helpful. The first point is that the “will of the people” that’s so central to the folk theory is a myth. There is no such thing as the will of the people. The people are divided on most everything and they usually don’t know what they want.

For example, voter opinions can be very sensitive to variation how questions are worded. This reflects a powerful cognitive bias called framing effects. Marketers and politicians are acutely aware of unconscious biases and they use them with a vengeance to get what they want.

For example in one 1980’s survey, about 64% said there was too little federal spending on “assistance to the poor” but only  about 23% said that there was too little spending on “welfare.” The 1980s was the decade when vilification of “welfare” was common from the political right. Before the 1991 Gulf War, about 63% said they were willing to “use military force”, but less than 50% were willing to “engage in combat”, while less than 30% were willing to “go to war.” Again, the overwhelmingly subjective nature of political concepts is obvious, i.e., assistance vs. welfare and military force vs. combat vs. war. Where is the will of the people in any of this? If it is there, what is it?

Serving the will of the people under the folk theory of democracy is often hard or impossible because there’s often no way to know what it is.

The second point is that voters usually don’t rationally hold politicians accountable for failure or reward them for success. People don’t logically distinguish success from failure. A&B point out that politicians are routinely voted out of office for things they cannot logically be held accountable for. For example, droughts, floods and an increase in shark attacks (yes, shark attacks) routinely cost incumbent presidents significant numbers of votes.

On economic issues, voters only consider a few months leading up to an election to decide if a president or party has done well. Data analysis suggests that if the 1938 recession had occurred two years earlier, FDR would not have been reelected and the New Deal would have ended. Similar “myopic” voting in the 1930s occurred in other countries and ideology had nothing to do with it. Perceptions of success and failure dominated voting in response to the Great Depression, not anything else.

That voting behavior contradicts the notion that voters rationally reward success and punish failure. In other words, politicians have little incentive to adhere to the folk theory. They know that their own success and failure can easily depend on things outside their control. That’s another key aspect of the folk theory that the data blows to smithereens.

If democracy is so strange, then what’s the point of doing more research? A&B give compelling reasons. They argue that “the mental frameworks” that both liberals and conservatives employ can be defended “only by willful denial of a great deal of credible evidence . . . . intellectual honesty requires all of us to grapple with the corrosive implications of that evidence for our understanding of democracy.”

Social identity & flawed fixes

Collectively, A&B see the data as showing that most voters vote less on policy preferences or ideology, and more on who they are or their social identities. For most voters, social identity shapes most thinking and voting behavior. That largely “reflects and reinforces social loyalties.”

A&B observe that our flawed perception of democracy led to failed remedies to reform it. Such fixes, including term limits and state level ballot initiatives, often undercut what people want from their democracy. Instead of acting to make democracy fit the theory, “more democracy” fixes that voters keep trying usually shift power to organized special interests. That outcome is precisely what voters did not want.

Why understanding democracy is critical

The point is clear. If you don’t understand how and why democracy works, you can’t change what you don’t like about it. Therefore, go figure out what democracy really is, not what one thinks it is or should be. A&B have gone a long way toward pointing out how and why it works. However, solutions to democracy issues are not clear. It may require years of empirical trial and error. Despite the surprising nature of democracy, A&B point to a more rational understanding of how things work. That is encouraging. The disappointment is that solutions are not obvious.

DP repost: 4/1/20

Dissident Politics: February and March 2016

Instead of posting here, DP has been engaging at the Disqus, mostly at the politics channel Harlan's Place over the last couple of months.

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/a_republican_party_split/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/trump_and_cultural_economic_disconnects/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/the_us_israel_alliance/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/the_partisan_debate_over_obamas_nominee/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/analysis_reinstitute_the_institute_for_propaganda_analysis/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/philosophy/discussion/channel-philosophy/is_it_possible_to_nudge_politics_in_the_direction_of_objectivity/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/is_political_free_speech_more_harmful_than_helpful_to_the_public_interest/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/should_americans_pay_their_taxes/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/prickly_questions_about_healthcare/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/is_liberal_conservative_or_pragmatic_ideology_best/

https://disqus.com/home/channel/harlansplace/discussion/channel-harlansplace/unlocking_the_iphone_disastrous_for_privacy_or_not/

How to fix a broken society

American society is broken in terms of politics. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be so broken like it is now. America can do lots better.

How to fix what's broken

This is the fix: With a will to do so and lots of sustained effort, we can change from a species, society or individual that is overwhelmingly and unconsciously morally judgmental, intolerant and intuitive-subjective to one that is less driven by those unconscious personal biases. Humans can train themselves to be at least somewhat more driven by our conscious capacity to reason without all the astounding fact- and logic-distortion that goes on unconsciously in the human mind.

Moral courage

That kind of mind set change isn't easy and for some or many (most?) people, the transition will be impossible. Changing from an intuitive-subjective to a rational-objective mind set requires self-awareness and blunt, honest questioning of one's own personal morals, values and ideologies. That exercise takes moral courage and most people are not up to the task especially (i) if they have to try to transition alone and without help and/or peer pressure and (ii) when society is pushing them hard to move in the opposite direction of being more intuitive-subjective, which is the case in modern America and most or all other countries on Earth.

It's about biology, not philosophy, religion or ideology

All of that is based on cognitive biology and social science, not philosophy. Philosophy, like other things, including politics and religion, is a direct manifestation of our cognitive biology, which is a direct manifestation of how we evolved. Science has finally figured out how our brains work to the extent that reasonably accurate or meaningful generalizations can be made - the details are still a work in progress:

1. As a default proposition and with maybe a very few exceptions, and many degrees of intensity, most people are highly morally judgmental, intolerant and narrow-minded.

2. Human mental activity is mostly unconscious and intuitive for most people and those biological processes can be easily tricked, misled and manipulated, e.g., intentional deceit routinely happens in politics.

3. We can consciously reduce unconscious personal fact and logic distortion if, and only if, (1) we become aware of our biological mental situation and (2) we want to change from being mostly intuitive-subjective in our thinking to becoming more open-minded and rational-objective (here's a short story that nails this perfectly).

4. It isn't yet clear if our cognition or mode of thinking is biologically constrained to humans being 99% unconscious and intuitive-subjective (i.e., only 1% conscious and rational-objective) or something less, e.g., 90% or maybe even 75% - DP's personal bias is that for most average people conscious and rational-objective thinking can have at least 10-20% of the influence or power over our judgments and behavior and maybe even 50-70% for some people.

That's just a taste for where human civilization can go, if people have the will to change. At the moment, there is no such collective or societal will. In fact, powerful currents in American society are pushing people away from conscious rational objectivity and toward self-deluded unconscious intuitive subjectivity. That is a major factor in (i) what is tearing American society apart and (ii) increasing the odds that humans will kill themselves off in some avoidable act of violence or by lulling them into complacency about a latent existential threat - the human mind is not equipped to react to certain kinds of modern threats because we didn't evolve with, and have to survive, any modern threat.

That's just a taste for where human civilization can go, if people have the will to change. At the moment, there is no such collective or societal will. In fact, powerful currents in American society are pushing people away from conscious rational objectivity and toward self-deluded unconscious intuitive subjectivity at least in politics, if not most everything else. That is a major factor in (i) what is tearing American society apart and (ii) increasing the odds that humans will kill themselves off in some avoidable act of violence or by lulling them into complacency about a latent existential threat - the human mind is not equipped to react to certain kinds of modern threats because we didn't evolve with, and have to survive, any modern threats.

Can a society be 50% rational about politics?

In his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, social scientist Johnathan Haidt touched on the topic of just how rational (objective) humans can be as a sentient species. Dissident Politics is aware of no precise way to measure the ratio of subjectivity-intuition to objectivity-reason in individual people. Regardless, Dr. Haidt interpreted the research described in his book as consistent with most or nearly all people being somewhere in the range of about 75.1% to 99% intuitive-subjective and about 1% to 24.9% rational-objective.[1]

At one point in his book, Haidt asserts that 99% of human cognitive activity is unconscious:

“. . . . the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.”

 That statement strongly implies that we are highly intuitive or subjective about how we see and think about the world and issues we encounter. Because unconscious mental processes is where subjectivity or intuition arises in human cognition, that accords with Haidt's belief that we are overwhelmingly intuitive or subjective in all of our activities, including politics and religion.

Three visions of reality: Plato, Hume & Jefferson

Haidt points out that other hypotheses were based on the knowledge of their times. Plato (428-348 BC) postulated that humans are are almost exclusively intuitive-subjective but that only philosophers could rise above that situation and be much more or almost exclusively rational-objective. Given the imprecision, it may be reasonable to assert that Plato thought that most people in a society are less than 50% rational, but a few could be maybe 80-99% rational with effort.

The influential Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) postulated that humans are 100% intuitive and 0% rational, arguing that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Hume's reference to the passions is taken as a reference to human intuition and emotion.

On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), while contemplating his personal moral struggle about whether to engage in an extramarital affair, hypothesized that intuition or emotion and reason are co-equals, implying that we are about 50% intuitive and 50% rational. Being a very informed person, Jefferson presumably was aware of Plato's and Hume's opinions on the subject. 

Hume was mostly right . . . . or was he?

Haidt argues that existing cognitive science data is more consistent with Hume’s vision than Jefferson or Plato, i.e., we are inherently or biologically much more intuitive than rational because that’s how we evolved. Obviously, there is imprecision in such simple descriptions. Hume called reason a slave to the passions but Haidt said that “went too far.” Based on the foregoing, Haidt may believe that we are roughly 1-10% rational or objective and thus about 90-99% intuitive or subjective, including in our dealings with politics.

For Dissident Politics, that just doesn't seem right. Social scientists have identified small numbers of people, superforecasters, who are truly talented at predicting future events. Those people were not trained analysis experts, but instead were average people with time on their hands for a four-year experiment to test their ability to predict the future.

Analysis of superforecaster personal traits show that, among other things, they are heavily biased toward being open-minded, rational-objective and self-questioning. Those few people appear to have figured out ways to reduce the fact- and logic-distorting of their own unconscious intuitive impulses, mainly by exerting conscious efforts to be disciplined and rational. That doesn't sound like people being just 1-10% rational.

The other group that seem to be fairly rational is scientists, especially scientists who are in hard sciences such as math, physics and chemistry and maybe even biology, including the social sciences (psychology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive linguistics, political science, etc). It is easy to see that intuition can sometimes drive insights and even breakthroughs in the sciences. However, it is equally easy to see that translating insights into widely accepted beliefs requires discipline, reason and adherence to undistorted facts and unbiased logic. In addition, discipline and reason dominates the routine experimentation that sometimes leads to new knowledge and insight. Both reason and intuition are at play at the same time and which dominates is not obvious.

The plastic brain

Another consideration that Haidt doesn't explicitly account for is the fact that our intuitive minds can learn from our rational or conscious thinking. The human brain is plastic and does learn from experience and/or conscious effort to learn. This happens all the time in all sorts of fields. Master chess players become more intuitive about chess with time and practice. The same is true for athletes, scientists and fire fighters, who sometimes gain great insight from years of on the job experience.

Changes in personal ways of looking at the world as people pass through life also seem to reflect the influence of reason on intuition. For example, if intuition were so dominant, then why do people occasionally reverse their fundamental ideology or morals, e.g., change from liberal to conservative or religious to atheist? A big role for reason in such changes seems to be present.

All of that raises the question of whether applying intuition to (1) the world at large and/or (2) mathematics based on or informed by, say, a Ph.D. in mathematics and 30 years of successful academic research experience, is truly irrational or is reason or objectivity that the human mind has integrated into its unconscious processing. It would not be the case that such knowledge, although unconscious, is purely irrational. That is intuition being informed by reason or objectivity.

Given that, it can be the case that most scientists are 20-80% rational most or all of the time at least about their science, if not politics as well. In other words, it may still be the case that Jefferson was more right than Hume at least for some people. But again, there is imprecision. The current data does show we are significantly intuitive creatures but doesn't make clear either how rational we or societies really are or possibly can be.

Confusing terminology

Unfortunately, the labels used to describe these concepts seem to be confusing. The confusion obscures the question and how to think about the question. Reframing might ask questions this way:

Assuming that reason or objectivity can exert influence over personal beliefs and behavior via both conscious-rational and intuitive-subjective mental processes, how objective[2] can societies, groups, tribes or individuals be? How rational can American society be about politics, given freedom of speech, which includes a prevalence of lies, intentional misinformation and withheld facts and context?

For better or worse, human cognition is both unconsciously intuitive and consciously rational. Each process affects the other. That’s just how our brains evolved. Our unconscious intuitive mental processes are capable of distorting fact and logic without our conscious knowledge. Even when we know we are being mostly or completely objective, fact-based and logical, that can easily be false knowledge. Our ideology or morals and our powerful innate biases (confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, personal knowledge bias, etc) can and often do overwhelm facts and logic. That distortion can and sometimes does make facts and logic fit with our intuitive-subjective personal ideology or morals, even if it simply isn't true.

Regardless of how rational a person, group or society can be about politics, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that being more rational would be better in the long run than staying with the high degree of intuitive false reality and distorted logic that drives intuitive American two-party politics.

Footnotes:
1. In social science, unconscious mental processes are understood to be where moral judgment and intuition (subjectivity) and the more extreme response of emotion arise. Unconscious mental processes can (i) foster intuitive distortion of reality (fact) and common sense (logic), and (ii) generate personal moral judgments, disdain and intolerance that guide personal beliefs and behaviors, including political polarization, distrust of political opposition and, as discussed before, lack of empathy and human conflict and war.

2. For this discussion, cognitive objectivity is defined as thinking and beliefs that are based on fact and logic that are not heavily biased or distorted by personal ideology or morals. some biasing seems to be unavoidable, but being aware biases and wanting to reduce their impacts does help. Some people don't want to reduce the effects of their biases on their beliefs for various reasons. Little or nothing can be done to help or change those people.

An example: Most people who deny that human activity is a significant cause of global climate change base that belief on their knowledge that (i) climate scientists are frauds, (ii) climate science and the data are too unsettled to be believable, (iii) the evidence of that climate scientists who deny a human connection is the truth and/or (iv) a significant minority or even a majority of climate scientists reject a human connection or that climate change is real. Most people who accept that human activity is an important cause, tend to believe as facts the opposite of every one of those four beliefs or facts. Given such stark differences in their perceptions of the facts, either one side or the other has to be objectively wrong about at least one of those four fact beliefs, if not all four. That is the case even though their four truths are taken by both sides to be objective fact or reality. Both sides can't possibly be completely right. That exemplifies the power of subjective ideology or morals to dictate perceptions of both facts and logic in cases where the perceptions are wrong.