This coming week, on Thursday and Friday, I will be doing three different two talks in New York City, two at NYU Law School, and one at Columbia Law School. On Thursday, April 11, from 12:10 to about 1:10, Columbia law Professor Theodore Shaw and I will be debating affirmative action and the Supreme Court’s […]
Archive | Democracy
Forthcoming Article on Voter Errors in Attributing Responsibility to Public Officials
In a forthcoming article I coauthored with economists Bryan Caplan, Eric Crampton, and Wayne Grove, we find that voters routinely make major mistakes in attributing responsibility for a variety of policy outcomes to different branches and levels of government. This undermines voters’ ability to properly reward and punish political incumbents for their performance. The article […]
Prediction Markets and Political Ignorance
In two recent posts, guest-blogger John McGinnis makes a strong case that the US government should legalize prediction markets, that these markets are valuable sources of information, and that claims that prediction markets can easily be “manipulated” are overblown. I agree completely on all counts. Nevertheless, I am somewhat pessimistic that prediction markets will do […]
Reflections on John McGinnis’ Accelerating Democracy
By Ilya Somin on March 29, 2013 11:45 am in Democracy, Federalism, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
Guest blogger John McGinnis’ new book Accelerating Democracy is an outstanding analysis of the ways in which modern technology and social science can improve the quality of decision-making in government and society. It is probably the most important book on that subject in a long time. Much of John’s thesis is compelling. He is right […]
What to Do When Illiberal, Anti-Democratic Forces Take Power Through the Democratic Process
When Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship began to collapse two years ago, I expressed the fear that the ultimate outcome might be a new Egyptian government more oppressive than the old. The main reasons for my concern were that illiberal radical Islamists were far better positioned to seize power than liberal democrats, and that Egyptian public opinion […]
The Moment of Victory in Minnesota
For an example of a pure, spontaneous eruption of joy it’s hard to beat the moment we learned that the anti-gay marriage amendment had been defeated in Minnesota. At 1:45 the staff and board of Minnesotans United For All Families, was gathered in a conference room just across from the hall from where thousands had gathered […]
Winning Minnesota
By Dale Carpenter on November 8, 2012 3:06 am in Democracy, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage, Sexual Orientation
Most of the post-election attention to the gay-marriage ballot fights has focused on the inspiring wins in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state, where same-sex marriages will now be legal. But equally important in the long-term is what happened in Minnesota on Tuesday. Eighteen months ago, when the state legislature voted to place a ban on same-sex marriages on […]
Education and Voting Rights for Knowledgeable Children
By Ilya Somin on November 7, 2012 1:03 pm in Democracy, Education, Political Ignorance, Voting Rights for Children
In response to my post arguing that we should grant voting rights to politically knowledgeable children, Paul Horwitz of Prawfsblawg makes the following suggestion: What spurred this post is Ilya Somin’s argument on the VC yesterday that knowledgeable children ought to be allowed to vote. He addresses some standard objections in his post, but a […]
Suffer the Little Children to Vote
By Ilya Somin on November 6, 2012 11:05 am in Democracy, Election Law, Political Ignorance, Voting Rights for Children
On this election day, as on most others, we will hear a lot about the need to increase turnout and the dangers of voter suppression. But few will even consider questioning the systematic exclusion of a huge part of our population from the franchise: children under the age of 18. We allow even the most […]
Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom
By Ilya Somin on October 15, 2012 11:30 am in Democracy, Federalism, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
My forthcoming article, “Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom,” is now available on SSRN. The article is part of a symposium on Federalism and Subsidiarity in the interdisciplinary journal Nomos, which focuses on a different broad issue in political theory every year. Other contributors include a variety of big-name federalism scholars in legal academia and […]
Why We Choose Presidents Based on the Wrong Issues
By Ilya Somin on October 1, 2012 9:38 pm in Democracy, Political Ignorance, Presidency, Public Opinion
In a recent Slate column, John Dickerson points out that presidential elections typically focus too much on issues the president has little control over and too little on those that he has more effect on: Nothing tests a president’s temperament like foreign affairs. Though this presidential campaign has only recently touched on the topic, the […]
Just Say No to Terrorism
In the 1980s, First Lady Nancy Reagan famously urged kids to “just say no” to drugs. Although I’m no fan of the War on Drugs, she was certainly correct to point out that saying “no” is a good way of avoiding the dangers of drug use. Co-blogger Eugene Volokh makes a similar argument with respect […]
The Arab Spring and the Video Riots
Ever since the Arab Spring began, I have been concerned that it could ultimately result in the establishment of Islamist regimes as bad or worse than the more secular dictatorships they replaced. One of the reasons for that fear is that public opinion in many Arab nations is highly illiberal and intolerant. As a result, […]
Larry Solum on the Countermajoritarian Difficulty
By Ilya Somin on September 10, 2012 11:20 am in Constitutional Theory, Democracy, Representation-Reinforcement
Georgetown law professor Larry Solum has an excellent post summarizing the ongoing debate over the “countermajoritarian difficulty,” one of the most common criticisms of judicial review. Solum summarizes the “difficulty” as follows: The counter-majoritarian difficulty may be the best known problem in constitutional theory… The counter-majoritarian difficulty states a problem with the legitimacy of the […]
Peter Orszag’s Case for Compulsory Voting
By Ilya Somin on June 24, 2012 11:05 am in Democracy, Elections, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
In a recent op ed, former Obama adviser and Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag argues that the the United States should make voting compulsory: The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults. It’s our […]