I recently wrote a guest post for the Open Borders blog on migration and political freedom. The connection between the two is often ignored in debates over immigration policy. Here’s an excerpt: There is widespread agreement that political freedom is a fundamental human right – that everyone is entitled to substantial freedom of choice in […]
Archive | Voting With Your Feet
More on African Americans Voting with Their Feet
By David Bernstein on October 28, 2013 1:45 pm in Constitutional History, Unions, Voting With Your Feet
Below, Ilya discusses the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North in the 1940s and 50s as an example of poor people “voting with their feet.” It’s that, though it’s a bit more complicated than that, too, because federal New Deal policies set out to limit acreage farmed in the South […]
More on Voting With Your Feet and the Poor
By Ilya Somin on October 28, 2013 12:57 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
At America Magazine, Robert D. Sullivan has responded to my post in which I criticized his earlier post claiming that “voting with your feet” only benefits the affluent. Sullivan’s most recent post actually outlines many areas of agreement between us. He now recognizes that foot voting can in fact benefit the poor, and that the […]
Voting With Your Feet Works for the Poor, Too
By Ilya Somin on October 25, 2013 12:15 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
At the America Magazine website, Robert David Sullivan responds to my book and Cato Unbound essay arguing that foot voting leads to better-informed decisions than ballot box voting by claiming that foot voting is only likely to benefit the wealthy: I haven’t seen the book, but Somin’s essay reads like a whispered call for solidarity […]
My Response to Heather Gerken’s Comment on Democracy and Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 21, 2013 6:03 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Federalism, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
Cato Unbound has posted my response to Yale Law School Professor Heather Gerken’s thoughtful critique of my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. Over the next day or two, they will also post my response to the insightful commentaries by Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics and political theorist Jeffrey Friedman. The conversation […]
My Balkinization Post on the Informational Advantages of Voting With Your Feet over Ballot Box Voting
By Ilya Somin on October 7, 2013 5:14 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
The latest in my series of Balkinization posts about my book Democracy and Political Ignorance is now up. This one deals with the informational advantages of voting with your feet over ballot box voting.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on September 6, 2013 8:09 pm in Democracy, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Education, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently gave a speech lamenting widespread political ignorance in the United States: Two-thirds of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told the crowd that packed into a Boise State ballroom to hear her Thursday. About one-third can name the three branches […]
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 […]
Political Ignorance and Partisan Bias Go Down When Survey Respondents Are Rewarded for Correct Answers
By Ilya Somin on June 5, 2013 6:24 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Many studies show that there is widespread political ignorance, with large percentages of the public ignorant of fairly basic facts. In addition, voters’ perception of the facts is often heavily influenced by partisan bias. For example, Republicans overestimate the rates of inflation and unemployment when there is a Democratic president, while Democrats have the opposite […]
Public Ignorance About How Government Policy Works
By Ilya Somin on June 4, 2013 7:02 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Growth of Government, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
NPR reports on an interesting recent article by psychologist Phil Fernbach and his coauthors, which finds that public ignorance about the details of policy has an important impact on voters’ political views: Should the United States impose unilateral sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program? Should we raise the retirement age for Social Security? Should […]
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 […]
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 […]
Federalism, Immigration, and Interjurisdictional Competition
Temple law professor Peter Spiro has an interesting New York Times column arguing that supporters of immigration should not fear a Supreme Court decision upholding Arizona’s draconian anti-illegal immigrant law, because interjurisdictional competition is likely to take care of the problem. By contrast, he fears that if the Court strikes down the law, the result […]
Heather Gerken’s Progressive Defense of Federalism
By Ilya Somin on March 13, 2012 9:11 pm in Federalism, Gay Rights, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Voting With Your Feet
Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken, a prominent federalism scholar, has an interesting article in Democracy urging her fellow liberals to take a more favorable view of federalism: Progressives are deeply skeptical of federalism, and with good reason. States’ rights have been invoked to defend some of the most despicable institutions in American history, most notably […]
Reassessing Our Federal and State Constitutions
By Ilya Somin on March 8, 2012 11:27 pm in Constitutional Amendments, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Federalism, Voting With Your Feet
In this recent post, University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford Levinson calls for a reassessment of our federal and state constitutions: [I]nstead of being fixated on what the Constitution means, one instead asks whether the Constitution, given a stipulated meaning that may in fact not be at all difficult to discern, is in fact […]