Sean IllingДoes the average voter even have what we might call policy preferences? Christopher Achen And so if you think about people using the democratic levers that they have available to them to express themselves, rather than to make instrumental choices, you're probably more often than not going to be closer to the actual psychology of what they're up to. So much of politics, not surprisingly, turns out to be about expressive behavior rather than instrumental behavior - in other words, people making decisions based on momentary feeling and not on some sound understanding of how those decisions will improve or hurt their life. It turns out, when it comes to political outcomes, most people are not making rational decisions based on the real-world impact they will have on their life, in part because they just donвЂ™t know. As an economist, he emphasized more clearly than people had previously the significance of the distinction between economic life, where people make choices that directly affect their own well-being (i.e., you stop buying products that you donвЂ™t like) and the political world, where the connection between individual behavior and the outcomes that I experience is so indirect that it almost makes no sense for me to try to perceive instrumentally. One of the more important building blocks for our work was Joseph SchumpeterвЂ™s work on democracy. So they're doing the best they can but, as we said in the book, we think that we need institutional structures that would get them some help and do what the Federalist Papers suggest should be done, which is to have a popular voice in government but to supplement it with the opinions of people with more expertise and more experience. It's hard for those of us who get paid to think about it all the time to make sense of it, and it's very hard for people with a lot of other demands in their lives. I think people are looking for ways to make sense of what is a very complicated reality out there. They just don't have a lot of information, and so they substitute guesses and views of the world that make them feel comfortable. I think people are doing the best they can. What actually drives voter behavior? Christopher Achen Voter behavior is erratic and incoherent Sean Illing But even if democracy is the least bad form of government, we still ought to know how it works and, more importantly, how it doesnвЂ™t.

I want to believe in those comforting myths about democracy, mostly because the alternatives are worse. But to be perfectly honest, I found many of their criticisms of democracy compelling. Last month, I sat down with Achen and Bartels to talk about their critique of democracy, and how it might explain our current political predicament.ДЄ warning: This is a long and sweeping discussion, touching on a number of thorny issues. It virtually guarantees that at some point, youвЂ™ll end up with a grossly unfit leader.ДЄnd that, of course, is what we now have. If Achen and Bartels are right, democracy is a faulty form of politics, and direct democracy is far worse than that. вЂњElection outcomes,вЂќ Achen and Bartels conclude, вЂњturn out to be largely random events from the viewpoint of democratic theory.вЂќ The reason is simple: Most people make political decisions on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not an honest examination of reality. The book lays waste to a reassuring theory about democracy that goes something like this: Ordinary citizens have preferences about what the government ought to do they elect leaders who will carry out those preferences and vote against those who will not in the end, weвЂ™re left with a government that more or less serves the majority.Д®ven voters who pay close attention to politics are prone - in fact, more prone - to biased or blinkered decision-making. Most people pay little attention to politics when they vote, if they vote at all, they do so irrationally and for contradictory reasons. This is a story political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels tell in Democracy for Realists, in service of a sobering thesis: Voters donвЂ™t have anything like coherent preferences. Though Wilson wasnвЂ™t responsible for the hungry sharks, he was the incumbent, and people vote against incumbents when things are bad. Why, you ask? Because the beachfront towns (which rely on tourism) were negatively impacted by the attacks. As a result, Woodrow Wilson lost his home state in the presidential election. Consider the curious case of New Jersey in 1916: That summer, there was a string of deadly shark attacks along the Jersey Shore.

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