BY PIO SZAMEL

The problem with our democracy, according to The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, is not that our institutions are not reflecting the will of the voters well enough but, rather, that they are reflecting it too well. Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, argues that voters’ own irrational biases, rather than flaws in the democratic process, compel voters to support policies that are not in their interest. While one may quibble with his specifics, the overall argument is convincing and applicable across a variety of fields.

Voter Irrationality and Marginal Cost
Caplan’s argument is simple: Irrational beliefs, such as a bias against foreigners or against positive economic news, are “cherished views, valued for their own sake.” When the personal cost of acting on those irrational beliefs is low, voters will vote for bad policies. In a large democracy such as the United States, the cost is very low: Because the chance of any one voter swinging the election is microscopic, his vote is essentially meaningless. A voter is therefore inclined to vote on the basis of beliefs that make him feel better, even if those beliefs lead to policies that leave him worse off. When every voter faces the same small cost to voting based on comforting but irrational beliefs, society reaps the result: policies that, Caplan attempts to demonstrate beyond doubt, are objectively bad.

Plumbing the Depths of Bias
Caplan makes a thorough economic case for voter irrationality. Chapters are devoted to dismantling other theories that attempt to explain bad policies, and to demonstrating why voters may behave irrationally in elections but rationally in the rest of their lives. Caplan posits four biases to explain the irrational beliefs of voters: an “anti-market” bias, an “anti-foreigner” bias, a “pessimistic” bias, and a “make-work” bias. (The “make-work” bias favors the preservation of jobs at the expense of economic growth.) All of these biases are plausible, but it is unclear how Caplan came up with these particular biases and why he thinks they are dominant over other possibilities.

Caplan could buttress his case for the ubiquity of irrational beliefs by providing more examples outside of his own field. The examples that he does provide, such as a proven bias against even tiny levels of potential harmful chemicals that toxicologists agree are meaningless, often seem more compelling than his hand-picked economic biases. The reader cannot help but wonder whether there are more such beliefs out there.

Dealing with an Irrational Electorate
Once he has made the case for irrationality, Caplan lays out the consequences for democratic government. Suddenly, letting the people have a say in everything through their government does not seem like such a good idea. Leaving certain matters to markets, in which people face incentives to behave rationally, will often lead to choices more in line with the public interest. And political institutions may perform better when they are unresponsive to democratic pressures if those pressures are pushing in the wrong direction. Political ignorance and apathy may in fact be positive forces, to the extent that they dilute the irrationality in the electorate.

Caplan inveighs against what he calls “democratic fundamentalism,” or the belief that more democracy is always better. In fact, he criticizes Winston Churchill’s characterization of democracy as “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms” as an “all-or-nothing rhetorical trick.” Caplan suggests that if voters are irrational, limiting the purview of democracy can curtail the damage. In his last few polemical chapters, he argues that economists should abandon tact and careful qualification to attack his chosen biases when given the slightest opportunity—not only in classrooms but in the media and the popular press.

Reexamining our Perspective on Democracy
It would be a shame if this call-to-arms, focused narrowly on economics, distracts readers from the fundamental issue of systematically-irrational voting, because Caplan’s underlying point is strong—and has unexplored implications for a variety of fields. The Myth of the Rational Voter forces the reader to take a second look at our nation’s unshakable faith in the wisdom of the electorate. ]]>