Christopher H. Achen

Democracy 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.… (más)

Democracy 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. 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. 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.… (más)

Many current conceptions of democracy are based on the idea that "Ordinary people have preferences about what their governments should do. They choose leaders who will do those things, or they enact their preferences directly in referendums"(p.1). This book provides a dispassionate, social-scientific critique of that idea. The authors show on several fronts (utilizing primarily US election statistics) that this democratic ideal is far too demanding to have any basis in reality. Whether the mechanism is democratic representation, direct democracy or retrospective accountability, the ability of voters to rationally control governmental decision-making is almost nonexistent.

The book gets off to a good start from that vantage point, but some of the chapters in the middle are a bit superfluous. In chapter 6 on "economic voting", the authors compare election results against macroeconomic data. It seems to me that this comparison rests on the specious assumption that the state of the economy was the only thing voters could have been concerned with when they voted. Chapter 7 then analyses depression-era economic and election statistics at a level of detail which only political science specialists could find interesting.

Thankfully, the book again becomes more interesting towards the end. The authors argue that the true psychological basis of voting behaviour does not lie in individual preferences, but in group identity. In deciding whom to vote for, people first identify themselves with a group, and then vote according to this group allegiance. Political parties are at the center of group identification. Instead of responding to the preferences of the people, they set the parameters for those preferences.

The authors do not (yet) present a realistic theory of democracy which would avoid the errors of earlier theories. Nevertheless, the last chapter of the book has many interesting conclusions which are bound to stimulate a lot of useful discussion.… (más)