Book Review: Democracy For Realists

In their book, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels (Princeton University Press, 2016) describe the major disconnect between what people believe democracy should be, what it really is and why it exists. The difference flows from human social and cognitive biology. That's no surprise. Human biology dictates that people's beliefs, perceptions and thinking about politics are usually more personal or subjective than objective and fact-based. 

 In democracies, the typical voter believes that people have preferences for what government should do and they pick leaders or vote their preferences in ballot initiatives. That then leads to majority preference becoming policy, which in turn, legitimizes government because the people consented through their votes. In that vision, government is ethical and has the people's interests at heart. That folk theory isn't how democracy works. The authors point out that the false definition leads to cynicism and unhappiness: “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.” That reflects the reality that people don’t or, because of their social and cognitive biology, can't pay enough attention to politics for the folk theory to work as people believe it should work. Humans are biologically too limited to truly understand what’s going on even if they tried. The authors put it like this: “. . . . 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.” 

Where have I seen this before? That describes reality based on what sentient humans can reasonably do. It's not a criticism of the human condition. Democracy and all or nearly all issues in politics are far too complex for voters to rationally deal with based on facts and unbiased reason. Instead, we have to simplify reality and apply heavily biased reason (common sense) to what we think we see. For the most part, what we believe we see is more illusion than objective reality. The authors acknowledge the problem: “The result may not be very comfortable or comforting. Nonetheless, we believe that a democratic theory worthy of serious social influence must engage with the findings of modern social science.” Although Democracy For Realists dissects popular democratic theory and analyzes science and historical data from the last hundred years or so, the exercise is about analyzing the role of human social and cognitive biology in democracy. Our false beliefs about democracy are shaped by human biology, not political theory. The authors research finds that the most important driver of voter belief and behavior is personal social or group identity, not ideology or theory.

For most voters, race, tribe and clan are more important than anything else. That manifests as irrational voter thinking and behavior. For example, the “will of the people” that’s central to the folk theory is a mostly a myth. People are divided on most everything and they usually don’t know what they really want. Average voters usually do not have enough knowledge to rationally make such determinations. For example, voter opinions can be very sensitive to variation in how questions are worded. This reflects a powerful unconscious bias called framing effects. 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. The word welfare had been co-opted and reframed as a bad thing. Similarly, 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.” The subjective nature of political concepts is obvious, i.e., assistance vs. welfare and military force vs. combat vs. war. What was the will of the people? One can argue that serving the will of the people under the folk theory of democracy is more chasing phantom than doing the obvious. 

Other aspects of voter behavior also make serving the people's will difficult at best. For example, voters are usually irrational about rewarding and punishing politicians for their performance in office. Incumbents are routinely punished at the polls for floods, drought, offshore shark attacks on swimmers, a recent local university football team's loss and, more importantly, when things are going badly in the last few months of the politicians current term in office. Where's the logic in any of that? Why should an incumbent worry about the people's will, when the people don't reward or punish on that basis? Incentives matter. Achen and Bartels show that there are sound biological reasons for why elections don't produce responsive governments.

Questions: Is the vision of democracy that Achen and Bartels portray reasonably accurate, nonsense or something else? If their vision is reasonably accurate, what, if anything can or should average voters do? Or, is what we have the about best that can be expected from the subjective (personal) biological basis of human social and cognitive biology? Is trying to understand and serve the will of the people the highest calling of democratic governments, or, would something else such as serving the "public interest"** constitute a better focus?

** Defined, for example, here: http://dispol.blogspot.com/2015/12/serving-public-interest.html