[FRIAM] Clueless: NYTimes 5/27/07 - "systematic folly of voters"

[Steve Kurtz]

a good case in point on how 'the story' has a fantasy life of its own,
and how people really are quite clueless about natural network systems
and what happens when you interfere with them..  ph

.... from Steve Kurtz   "Bravo for the NYT publishing this."

  _____  

May 27, 2007

Idea Lab


Clueless 


By GARY J. BASS

Of all the people who deserve some blame for the debacle in Iraq, don't
forget the American public. Today, about two-thirds of Americans oppose
the war. But back in March 2003, when United States troops stormed into
Iraq, nearly three out of four Americans supported the invasion. Doves
say that the public was suckered into war by a deceitful White House,
and hawks say that the press has since led the public to lose its nerve
- but the two sides implicitly agree that the public has been
dangerously unsure, or easily propagandized, or ignorant.

The disaster in Iraq has also fed a contradiction in American thinking
about democracy. On the one hand, Americans continue to share the
triumphalist, post-Soviet conviction that no other system of government
has any real legitimacy. On the other hand, there is a deepening despair
about whether and how the United States should spread democracy,
prompted not just by Iraq but also by the endurance of authoritarianism
in booming China and Vietnam and the disheartening Palestinian and
Lebanese experiments in democratization.

Now Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, has attracted
notice for raising a pointed question: Do voters have any idea what they
are doing? In his provocative new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter:
Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies," Caplan argues that "voters are
worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational - and vote
accordingly." Caplan's complaint is not that special-interest groups
might subvert the will of the people, or that government might ignore
the will of the people. He objects to the will of the people itself.

In defending democracy, theorists of public choice sometimes invoke what
they call "the miracle of aggregation." It might seem obvious that few
voters fully understand the intricacies of, say, single-payer universal
health care. (I certainly don't.) But imagine, Caplan writes, that just
1 percent of voters are fully informed and the other 99 percent are so
ignorant that they vote at random. In a campaign between two candidates,
one of whom has an excellent health care plan and the other a horrible
plan, the candidates evenly split the ignorant voters' ballots. Since
all the well-informed voters opt for the candidate with the good health
care plan, she wins. Thus, even in a democracy composed almost
exclusively of the ignorant, we achieve first-rate health care. 

The hitch, as Caplan points out, is that this miracle of aggregation
works only if the errors are random. When that's the case, the thousands
of ill-informed votes in favor of the bad health plan are canceled out
by thousands of equally ignorant votes in favor of the good plan. But
Caplan argues that in the real world, voters make systematic mistakes
about economic policy - and probably other policy issues too.

Caplan's own evidence for the systematic folly of voters comes from a
1996 survey comparing the views of Ph.D. economists and the general
public. To the exasperation of the libertarian-minded Caplan, most
Americans do not think like economists. They are biased against free
markets and against trade with foreigners. Absurdly, they think that the
American economy is being hurt by too much spending on foreign aid; they
also exaggerate the potential economic harms of immigration
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigrat
ion_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> . In a similar vein,
Scott L. Althaus, a University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/uni
versity_of_illinois/index.html?inline=nyt-org> of Illinois political
scientist, finds that if the public were better informed, it would
overcome its ingrained biases and make different political decisions.
According to his studies, such a public would be more progressive on
social issues like abortion
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/abortion
/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  and gay rights, more ideologically
conservative in preferring markets to government intervention and less
isolationist but more dovish in foreign policy. 

If the public doesn't know how to think, is there a solution? Caplan has
some radical medicine in mind. To encourage greater economic literacy,
he suggests tests of voter competence, or "giving extra votes to
individuals or groups with greater economic literacy." Until 1949, he
points out, Britain gave extra votes to some business owners and
graduates of elite universities. (Since worse-educated citizens are less
likely to vote, Caplan dislikes efforts to increase voter turnout.) Most
provocatively, perhaps, in an online essay Caplan has suggested a
curious twist on the tradition of judicial review: If the Supreme Court
can strike down laws as unconstitutional, why shouldn't the Council
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/whi
te_house_council_of_economic_advisers/index.html?inline=nyt-org> of
Economic Advisers be able to strike down laws as "uneconomical"?
(Caplan's book has been warmly recommended by N. Gregory Mankiw, the
former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers,
although Mankiw did not allude to this particular proposal.) Caplan also
suggests changing the educational curriculum to stamp out biased beliefs
in voters and policy makers alike - a suggestion as old as Plato's wish
that a city's ruling guardians be schooled in the "royal science" of
governance, which has seemingly been reincarnated as economics.

Caplan's argument has kicked off some stormy Internet debates. The
liberal blogger Ezra Klein wrote: "Obviously I, like most coastal-bred
elitists, don't think voters make terribly good decisions. But I also
don't think economic actors are particularly rational." He might have
added that many policy issues cannot be decided on the basis of avowedly
rational expert judgment alone. Take immigration, where governments
weigh not just economic costs and benefits but also demands of national
identity and cosmopolitanism. Or war: it's very complicated, so should
we abandon military planning to the professional generals?

Caplan's view of democracy is all about efficiency, not legitimacy. But
some time ago, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington pointed out
the weakness of dictatorships that justify their rule by only the
quality of their job performance: as soon as something goes wrong - a
war is lost or inflation skyrockets - the public has no further reason
to put up with a despot. If the public asked Caplan's Council of
Economic Advisers by what authority it struck down a law, the council
members could point only to their diplomas and peer-reviewed articles. A
democratic public may not always like - or understand - the government's
policy, but the consent of the governed gives the citizens a reason not
to reject the whole system.

Caplan recognizes that politicians, like voters, are prone to error. In
his zeal to question the public's judgment, however, he may underplay
the role of political elites in shaping that judgment. Would the public
choose badly if it had better guidance? John R. Zaller, a U.C.L.A.
political scientist, argues that even the more politically aware
citizens are driven largely by partisanship and by the cues they take
from political leaders. That sounds like George
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_b
ush/index.html?inline=nyt-per> W. Bush leading the country into war in
Iraq or, more happily, Bill
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clint
on/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Clinton tirelessly explaining how deficit
reduction would reduce long-term interest rates and thus strengthen the
economy - quite a complex argument. Maybe the public doesn't measure up
because the politicians are not doing their job properly, not the other
way around. 

Gary J. Bass, an associate professor of politics and international
affairs at Princeton, is writing a book on humanitarian intervention.

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