CNN recently published an interesting article about how most of the public believes that violent crime is rising, despite the fact that it has actually fallen dramatically over the last twenty years: You can’t escape the headlines. An Australian going to college in the United States is gunned down by teens who police say killed […]
Archive | Political Ignorance
My Forthcoming Article on “Jury Ignorance and Political Ignorance”
Having written extensively on the problem of voter ignorance, I was pleased to have the opportunity to write an article on the related problem of juror ignorance for the William and Mary Law Review Symposium on the Jury as a Political Institution. Although jury ignorance is a significant problem in some cases, overall I am […]
Political Ignorance and the Weakness of Consumer Demand for “Hard News”
Media writer Jack Shafer and economics columnist Megan McArdle have interesting pieces discussing the weakness of the market for “hard news.” Shafer notes that producing “hard news” has never been very profitable because most readers aren’t particularly interested in it and are reluctant to pay for it. McArdle points out that the hard news media’s […]
A Knowledgeable but Selfish Electorate May be Better than a Well-Meaning but Ignorant One
By Ilya Somin on August 8, 2013 2:50 pm in Democracy, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Elections, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
In my last post, I discussed economist Dwight R. Lee’s article about why most of the electorate does not decide who to vote for on the basis of narrow self-interest. Unfortunately, the very same incentive structure that leads most voters to base their decisions on the public interest also leads most of them to be […]
Selfish Voters are Not the Problem that Ails Democracy
By Ilya Somin on August 8, 2013 11:40 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Elections, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
Both right and left have standard stories explaining how selfish voters often prevent the government from adopting good policies. The right-wing story – made famous by Mitt Romney’s much-derided “47 percent” speech last year – is that voters become dependent on government transfer programs and then support those programs despite the harm they cause to […]
Sports Stadium Corporate Welfare Continues in Detroit
By Ilya Somin on July 26, 2013 3:38 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Choice, Sports and Games
Despite the having filed for bankruptcy, Detroit is going ahead with plans to spend over $400 million in public funds on a new hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings [HT: Josh Blackman]: Detroit’s financial crisis hasn’t derailed the city’s plans to spend more than $400 million in Michigan taxpayer funds on a new hockey […]
Political Ignorance in Congress
By Ilya Somin on July 17, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
David Boaz has an interesting post discussing Jonathan Martin’s Wall Street Journal review of veteran Washington Post journalist Robert Kaiser’s recent book Act of Congress. Martin explains how Kaiser shows that most members of Congress are ignorant about much of the important legislation they vote on: Congress is dominated by intellectual lightweights who are chiefly […]
Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop
By Ilya Somin on July 14, 2013 2:35 pm in Criminal Law, Federalism, Political Ignorance, War on Drugs
Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop describes the increasing militarization of America’s police forces over the last several decades, and the immense harm it inflicts. It is the best new book on a law-related topic I have read so far this year. I. The Growth of Militarized Policing. Balko describes the growing use of […]
Political Ignorance in Britain
By Ilya Somin on July 10, 2013 11:10 am in Democracy, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute has an interesting post analyzing recent survey data on widespread political ignorance in Britain [HT: Nigel Ashford]: The public is ignorant about politics and lacks even the basic facts that it would need to make sound judgments about political issues. A new poll by Ipsos-MORI shows just how […]
Video of the Huffington Post Live Discussion on Democracy and Constitutionalism in Egypt
A video of the Huffington Post Live panel discussion on constitutionalism, democracy, and the situation in Egypt is now available here. I was one of four participants. The others were Prof. Stanley Katz of Princeton, Zaid Al-Ali – an expert on constitutional design in the Arab world, and Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez. I tried to emphasize two […]
Upcoming Huffington Post Live Discussion on Egypt, Constitutionalism, and Democracy
This Monday at 4:30 PM (eastern time), I will be participating in a Huffington Post Live video discussion on democracy, constitutionalism, and their role in recent events in Egypt. I don’t yet know the exact parameters of the discussion or who the other participants will be (the organizers indicated that this article helped inspire them […]
Restricting Democracy in Order to Protect Other Liberal Values
Some argue that it would be hypocritical for the United States or other Western nations to support the recent military coup against radical Islamist Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. After all, we supposedly champion democracy, and Morsi was democratically elected. Whether the US should endorse the post-coup government, oppose it, or take a wait-and-see attitude is […]
A Brief Review of World War Z
I saw the movie version of World War Z last night. Although it was mostly for entertainment, I was also conducting in-depth academic research for my article on political ignorance and the undead, my planned contribution to Economics of the Undead: Blood Brains and Benjamins, edited by Glen Whitman and James Dow! The article builds […]
New Jersey Legislature Passes Ineffective Eminent Domain “Reform” Law
By Ilya Somin on June 23, 2013 11:45 am in Blight, Eminent Domain, Political Ignorance, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
New Jersey is one of only six states that have not enacted an eminent domain reform law since the the Supreme Court’s controversial 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which ruled that state and local governments have the power to condemn private property and transfer it to other private interests in order […]
Public Ignorance about Obamacare Revisited
By Ilya Somin on June 21, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Health Care, Insurance Exchanges, Obama, Political Ignorance
The recent Kaiser poll on health care linked by co-blogger Jonathan Adler reveals more evidence of public ignorance about Obamacare. Most notably, 45% of respondents say they have heard “nothing” about the health care reform law’s insurance exchanges, and 34% say they have heard “only a little.” This despite the fact that the exchanges are […]