... The average voter is not held in much esteem by economists and political
scientists, and [Bryan] Caplan [in his new book, The
Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics” (Princeton;
$29.95)] rehearses some of the reasons for this. The argument of
his book, though, is that economists and political scientists have misunderstood
the problem. They think that most voters are ignorant about political issues;
Caplan thinks that most voters are wrong about the issues, which is a different
matter, and that their wrong ideas lead to policies that make society as a whole
worse off. We tend to assume that if the government enacts bad policies, it’s
because the system isn’t working properly—and it isn’t working properly because
voters are poorly informed, or they’re subject to demagoguery, or special
interests thwart the public’s interest. Caplan thinks that these conditions are
endemic to democracy. They are not distortions of the process; they are what you
would expect to find in a system designed to serve the wishes of the people.
“Democracy fails,” he says, “because it does what voters want.” It is sometimes
said that the best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Caplan
thinks that the best cure is less democracy. He doesn’t quite say that the world
ought to be run by economists, but he comes pretty close.
The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the
scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans
have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms
“liberal” and “conservative,” and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than
two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and
what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states
have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term.
More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per
cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government
spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes
twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually
consumes about one per cent.
Even apart from ignorance of the basic facts, most people simply do not think
politically. They cannot see, for example, that the opinion that taxes should be
lower is incompatible with the opinion that there should be more government
programs. Their grasp of terms such as “affirmative action” and “welfare” is
perilously uncertain: if you ask people whether they favor spending more on
welfare, most say no; if you ask whether they favor spending more on assistance
to the poor, most say yes. And, over time, individuals give different answers to
the same questions about their political opinions. People simply do not spend
much time learning about political issues or thinking through their own
positions. They may have opinions—if asked whether they are in favor of capital
punishment or free-trade agreements, most people will give an answer—but the
opinions are not based on information or derived from a coherent political
philosophy. They are largely attitudinal and ad hoc....
