Law professor Josh Blackman and Yale student Shelby Baird have posted an interesting paper entitled “The Shooting Cycle,” on the reaction of public opinion to mass shooting incidents, like the tragic events in Newtown and the Washington Navy Yard in 2012 and 2013. Political ignorance plays an important role in their explanation for why such […]
Archive | Public Opinion
Concluding Thoughts on the Cato Unbound Symposium on Democracy and Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 31, 2013 2:10 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Choice, Public Opinion
The Cato Unbound symposium on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter is wrapping up up today. I am grateful to political theorist Jeffrey Friedman, Yale Law School Professor Heather Gerken, and Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics for their thoughtful critiques of the book, and to Jason Kuznicki of Cato Unbound for […]
Debating the Rationality of Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 25, 2013 4:36 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
At Cato Unbound, political theorist Jeffrey Friedman and I are continuing to debate whether widespread political ignorance is primarily the result of rational behavior (my view) or mostly inadvertent (his view). Friedman argues that most voters simply don’t realize that there is lots of political information out there that might help them make better decisions […]
My Response to Jeffrey Friedman’s Critique of Democracy and Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 22, 2013 7:02 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Polls, Public Choice, Public Opinion
Cato Unbound has now posted my response to political theorist Jeffrey Friedman’s insightful criticism of my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. Here is an excerpt: In his critique of my book, Jeffrey Friedman continues his longstanding efforts to show that most political ignorance is inadvertent rather than rational. In his […]
My Response to Sean Trende’s Commentary on Democracy and Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 22, 2013 6:55 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Polls, Public Opinion, Uncategorized
Cato Unbound has posted my response to RealClearPolitics Senior Elections Analyst Sean Trende’s thoughtful commentary on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. Here is an excerpt: Sean offers three important criticisms of the argument advanced in Democracy and Political Ignorance: that voters know enough to make good decisions on really […]
The Case for Designer Babies
Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan has an excellent post defending a prospect that many people find repugnant: the possibility that we might soon have “designer babies,” such that parents can use genetic engineering to increase their babies’ intelligence and other abilities. One major concern about designer babies is that it would lead to huge inequalities […]
My Cato Unbound Lead Essay on “Democracy and Political Ignorance”
By Ilya Somin on October 11, 2013 4:40 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
My essay, “Democracy and Political Ignorance,” – which summarizes some key themes of my new book on the same subject, is the lead essay in this month’s Cato Unbound forum. Here is the first paragraph: Democracy is supposed to be rule of the people, by the people, and for the people. But in order to […]
My Forbes Column on Political Ignorance and the Government Shutdown
The Forbes website recently published an op ed I wrote on public ignorance about the issues involved in the government shutdown. Here is an excerpt: As a government shutdown begins, much of the public knows very little about the issues behind it: Obamacare and the future of the federal budget. An August Kaiser Family Foundation […]
Steven Teles on “Kludgeocracy” and the Role of Government in Society
By Ilya Somin on September 25, 2013 11:15 am in Federalism, Growth of Government, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Separation of Powers
In the fall issue of National Affairs, Johns Hopkins political scientist Steven Teles has an interesting article on what he dubs the problem of “kludgeocracy” in American government: In recent decades, American politics has been dominated, at least rhetorically, by a battle over the size of government. But that is not what the next few […]
The Devil is Doing a Poor Job of Persuading People he Doesn’t Exist
It is said that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.” Well, it obviously wasn’t all that great a trick, because recent survey data shows that 57% of Americans still believe he does exist, including 72% of African-Americans, 65% of Republicans, and 61% of women (but only […]
Even Mathematically Literate People Become Innumerate when they Focus on Political Issues
At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum and Chris Mooney have interesting posts discussing a new paper by Yale law professor Dan Kahan and his coauthors, which finds that even people who are generally good at interpreting statistics act as if they are innumerate when faced with data that goes against their political views. Mooney summarizes the […]
Public Ignorance About Crime Rates
By Ilya Somin on August 26, 2013 6:42 pm in Criminal Law, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Politics, Public Opinion
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]