Originally published 2 October 2013 | ||
 | ||
Democracy books The Myth of the Rational, Democratic Reason: Politics - C, Against Democracy, An Economic Theory of, The History of the Origins of | ||
Democracy and political ignorance
Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter is a 2013 book from Stanford University Press by George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. Somin argues that people are ignorant and irrational about politics and that this creates problems for democracy. He further claims that this consideration argues in favor of smaller government.
Contents
Themes
Somin published a series of guest posts on the Balkinization blog outlining the key themes of his book.
Book reviews
Jack Shafer reviewed the book on his Reuters blog and discussed its implications for the role of mass media in democracy. Christopher Schmidt reviewed the book on his blog, part of the IIT Chicago-Kent Law blog network. A. Barton Hinkle reviewed the book for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. John David Dyche reviewed the book for WDRB. The book was also reviewed on Book Bargains and Previews.
Political commentator George Will reviewed the book favorably in a Washington Post op-ed.
Philosopher Jason Brennan briefly reviewed Somin's book on the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, ending with a strong recommendation to buy the book. Donald Boudreaux also offered a brief review and strong recommendation of the book on his blog, Cafe Hayek.
Discussions
Somin defended the thesis of his book in the lead essay of Cato Unbound in October 2013. Other participants in the exchange included Heather Gerken, Jeffrey Friedman, and Sean Trende. Gerken's response essay used the fox versus hedgehog distinction, arguing that Somin's ideal voter was a fox, whereas David Schleicher's work stressed that voters tended to be hedgehogs and use their party affiliation as an informational shortcut. Sean Trende argued that despite their ignorance, voters get the important things right. Jeffrey Friedman agreed that voters are ignorant, but claimed that rational ignorance was not the correct explanation of the phenomenon. Rather, he claimed that voters had a simplistic model of the world. Somin responded to all his critics and there was some further exchange of views between the participants.
The Cato Institute organized a book event to discuss the book, scheduled for November 6, 2013. Participants at the event included Somin, John Sides of George Washington University, and John Samples of the Cato Institute.
Other mentions
Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter and proponent of rational irrationality, wrote of Somin's book: "Ilya Somin's new Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter takes this [the voter irrationality/democratic failure] literature to new heights of excellence. Unfortunately, his solution is highly unlikely to be adopted. The size-of-government issue is too partisan." Somin responded to Caplan.
An article in Manila Times discussed Somin's book in the context of political protest movements in the Philippines.
Bryan Caplan's work on rational irrationality
Bryan Caplan, Somin's colleague at George Mason University, is a proponent of the theory of rational irrationality as an explanation of democratic failure. Caplan rejects many of the public choice arguments for rational ignorance, while embracing the traditional conclusions of public choice. He has expounded on his thesis in the book The Myth of the Rational Voter. Somin departs from traditional public choice theorists by carving out an important place for rational irrationality, while at the same time disagreeing with Caplan's assertion that rational ignorance alone would not be a problem. Somin expressed his key points in blog posts and elaborated further in Chapter 3 of his book.
Jason Brennan's book on the ethics of voting
Somin has noted at multiple places in his book and on his blog that his book and work on political ignorance is closely related to The Ethics of Voting, a book by political philosopher Jason Brennan.