Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter (PDF)

chapter 3 The Rationality of Political Ignorance The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is...

chapter 3 The Rationality of Political Ignorance The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh... before going back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ’n’ roll.... For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog. Tony Blair 1 many people conflate political ignorance with sheer “stupidity.”2 But often, ignorance is actually smart. Even highly intelligent voters can ratio- nally choose to devote little or no effort to acquiring political knowledge. Indeed, political knowledge levels have stagnated over the past several decades, despite the fact that IQ scores have risen enormously during the same period.3 Most political ignorance is actually rational. For most people in most situations, the benefits of devoting more than minimal time and effort to learning about politics are greatly outweighed by the costs. As former British prime minister Tony Blair puts it, they understandably prefer to Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. spend their time attending to “the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ’n’ roll.”4 Similarly, President Barack Obama once wrote that most of the ordinary citizens he encountered “were too busy with work or their kids to pay much attention to politics.”5 To say that most voters are ignorant because they are rational is not to suggest that their political behavior is completely rational in every way or that they perfectly calculate the costs and benefits of acquiring information. It merely suggests, as Blair and Obama recognized, that 74 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce most citizens have a rough general sense that devoting more than mini- mal time and effort to acquiring political information is rarely worth the trouble. The rationality of most political ignorance has profound implications for democratic theory. A particularly crucial one is that rationally igno- rant voters will often also find it rational to do a poor job of analyzing the information they do possess. In addition, it turns out that many people can rationally choose to vote, while at the same time remaining ignorant of basic political information. Rational ignorance also makes voters more vulnerable to political deception and misinformation. Widespread political ignorance is problematic regardless of whether it is rational. Irrational or purely accidental ignorance can still be dan- gerous. But, as we shall see, the rationality of ignorance makes it an even more difficult challenge to democracy than it might be otherwise. In many ways, political ignorance is no different from widespread ig- norance on many other matters where it is rational for individuals to invest little or no time to acquiring information. Even the smartest and best- educated people have the time, energy, and mental capacity to assimilate only a tiny fraction of all the information potentially available to them. Widespread ignorance is also common on a wide variety of nonpo- litical subjects, including basic science. The challenge posed by political ignorance, however, is that behavior that is individually rational may have major negative effects on society as a whole. Most other examples of rational ignorance do not pose as blatant a conflict between individual rationality and collective goals. Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. w h y pol i t ic a l ignor a nce is r at iona l Political ignorance is rational because an individual voter has virtually no chance of influencing the outcome of an election—possibly less than one in one hundred million in the case of a modern U.S. presidential elec- tion.6 A recent analysis concluded that in the 2008 presidential election, American voters had a roughly one in sixty million chance of casting a decisive vote, varying from one in ten million in a few small states to as low as one in one billion in some large states such as California.7 The 75 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 chances of influencing the outcome of a state or local election are greater, but still extremely low. As a result of such daunting odds, the incentive to accumulate political knowledge is vanishingly small, so long as the only reason for doing so is to cast a “better” vote.8 Political theorist Richard Tuck argues that the conventional wisdom underestimates the likelihood that one vote will make a difference, be- cause it can do so as long as it is part of a “causally efficacious set.”9 Such a set is the number of votes necessary to ensure victory in an elec- tion. For example, if Candidate A defeats Candidate B by 10,000 votes to 9,000, then 9,001 votes were needed to form the “causally efficacious set” needed for A to prevail. At least in a close election, Tuck contends, there is a substantial likelihood that any given vote will be part of the relevant set. In this case, for example, just over 90 percent of the voters supporting A were part of the set. The problem with Tuck’s argument is that, in all but vanishingly rare cases, a single voter’s decision has only an infinitesimal chance of deter- mining whether a given candidate gets enough votes to form a set large enough to ensure victory. For the potential voter interested in ensuring victory for the “right” candidate, the important question is not the likeli- hood that she will be part of a causally efficacious set, but the likelihood that her efforts will make a decisive difference in ensuring that the caus- ally efficacious set will come into existence at all. If her preferred candi- date will get enough votes to win without her, or will lose even with her support, her vote does not make any difference to the outcome, regard- less of whether it is part of a causally efficacious set or not. Relabeling Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. the number of votes necessary to ensure electoral victory as a “causally efficacious set” in no way changes the underlying reality that, in all but the smallest electorates, each individual vote has only a tiny probability of affecting the result. Since one vote almost certainly will not be decisive, even a voter who cares greatly about the outcome has almost no incentive to invest heav- ily in acquiring sufficient knowledge to make an informed choice. An informed electorate is a typical example of a “public good” that consum- ers have little incentive to help pay for because they can enjoy its benefits 76 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce even if they choose not to contribute to its production.10 Individuals have little incentive to contribute to the production of public goods because they know that their individual contributions are unlikely to make a dif- ference to the final result. The classic example of a public good is clean air. An individual citi- zen can enjoy the benefits of clean air in his city even if he drives a gas-­ guzzling car that generates an unusually high amount of pollution. If other residents of the city restrict their output of air pollution, the individual driver can enjoy clean air even without changing his habits. If the other residents continue to pollute, the individual driver also has no incentive to change his own behavior. Even if he buys a cleaner car or starts tak- ing the bus, that will not have any noticeable effect on the overall level of pollution. The effect of any one car on pollution levels is infinitesimally small. For this reason, most economists conclude that air pollution is unlikely to be effectively controlled unless some external power, such as the government, forces individuals and firms to reduce their emissions of harmful pollutants. In the same way, an individual voter has little incentive to become well informed about politics. If other voters are well informed, she can reap the benefits of a more knowledgeable electorate even if she remains completely ignorant. If the rest of the electorate has a low level of knowl- edge, the individual voter cannot improve electoral outcomes merely by becoming better informed herself. The likelihood that her knowledge will make a difference to electoral outcomes is not significantly greater than the likelihood that the removal of one gas-guzzling car will have a deci- Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. sive impact on the level of air pollution in a big city. In this way, political ignorance is a kind of “pollution” of the democratic process. Even highly intelligent and perfectly rational citizens can therefore choose to devote little or no effort to the acquisition of political knowl- edge. Only those who value political knowledge for reasons other than voting have an incentive to learn significant amounts of it. Acquiring extensive political knowledge for the purpose of becoming a more in- formed voter is, in most situations, simply irrational. This point applies even in cases when political information is available for free through the 77 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 media, the Internet or other sources. As long as learning the informa- tion and analyzing its significance requires time and effort, the ­process is still costly for citizens. Time and energy are valuable resources in and of themselves. The logic of rational ignorance applies just as readily to highly altruis- tic and civic-minded citizens as to narrowly self-interested ones.11 Even a 100 percent altruistic person—someone who always chooses to prioritize the welfare of others over his own whenever the two conflict—would not rationally devote much of his time to acquiring political information for the sake of casting an informed vote. No matter how great the benefits to others of a “correct” electoral outcome, the altruist’s ballot has almost no chance of bringing it about; in a large electorate the chance that his vote will be decisive is vanishingly small. The rational altruist would therefore seek to serve others in ways where a marginal individual contribution has a real chance of making a difference to their welfare, such as donating time or money to charitable organizations. By spending time and effort on becoming an educated voter, the altruist might actually diminish others’ welfare by depriving them of the services he might have conferred on them through alternative uses of the same resources. The applicability of the collective action argument to altruistic vot- ers obviates—at least in this case—one of the standard criticisms of eco- nomic models of politics: that they rest on unwarranted assumptions of self-interested behavior.12 The prediction of rational voter ignorance rests on no such assumption. As discussed further on, an altruist might ratio- Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. nally choose to vote despite the very low probability of casting a decisive ballot. The cost of going to the polls is also extremely low. But the time and effort needed to acquire more than minimal political knowledge is much greater. We cannot know for certain that the rational ignorance hypothesis is correct. But the available evidence strongly supports it. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the fact that political knowledge levels have remained roughly stable at low levels for decades, despite massive increases in ed- ucation levels and in the availability of information through the media and, more recently the Internet.13 With rationally ignorant voters, how- 78 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce ever, the main constraint on political knowledge is not the availability of information but the willingness to take the time to study and learn it. The average voter would likely seek out more information and con- sider it far more carefully if she knew that her vote would be decisive to the outcome. A recent electoral fluke provides some interesting confir- mation for this point. As a result of a failed attempt at gerrymandering, college student Jen Henderson became the sole voter eligible to vote on a Columbia, Missouri, referendum over whether to raise a local sales tax.14 Henderson carefully researched this somewhat esoteric policy issue before making her decision, and concluded that the sales tax increase was not as good an idea as it seemed at first.15 She clearly devoted far more time and effort to the issue than she would have had it been an ordinary referen- dum where her vote was just one of many thousands. While it would be a mistake to generalize too much from this one case, it is still instructive. None of this suggests that all political ignorance is the result of ratio- nal decision-making. And it certainly does not imply that most citizens make careful, detailed calculations of the costs and benefits of acquiring political knowledge. More likely, the average person simply has a rough intuitive sense that devoting more than minimal effort to acquiring politi- cal information isn’t worth the effort because it is unlikely to make any difference to political outcomes. If ignorance is rational because any one voter’s odds of affecting elec- toral outcomes are extremely low, perhaps it is also harmless. Political scientist Arthur Lupia suggests that most voters’ ignorance about federal government policy may not be a problem because “[f]or most people and Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. most issues,... opportunities and abilities to change federal outcomes are quite scarce.”16 It is indeed true that most voters have little individual ability to influence federal government policy. But voters’ decisions do have a major impact on federal policy in the aggregate. Although any in- dividual’s ignorance usually matters very little, the collective ignorance of the electorate as a whole matters a great deal.17 Rational Ignorance and the Paradox of Voting If the rational choice explanation of voter ignorance is sound, why do people bother to vote at all? Rational choice models of politics appear 79 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 to predict that all or most voters should not even show up at the ballot box, given the infinitesimal likelihood of affecting the electoral outcome. More precisely, they predict nonvoting unless the voter has some reason for casting a ballot that is unrelated to the likelihood of changing the re- sult. For example, he or she might vote out of a sense of duty or out of a desire to express his or her political views.18 If people vote for such reasons, however, it is possible that the same motives will also lead them to become informed. Critics therefore resist the rational ignorance hypothesis on the ground that it allegedly also predicts that citizens should choose not to vote.19 After all, if people can decide not to acquire political information because of the insignificance of their individual vote, why shouldn’t they also decide not to vote at all, for the exact same reason? As Russell Hardin puts it: Suppose we conclude that it is plausibly rational for a person not to master the logic of collective action, and that they therefore vote despite the lack of objective interest in doing so. Then why do they seem to follow the logic in not investing in the knowledge they would need to vote intelligently?20 However, it turns out that the decision to vote is rational so long as the voter perceives a significant difference between candidates and cares even slightly about the welfare of fellow citizens, as well as his or her own.21 A relatively simple calculation suggests why this is true.22 Assume that Uv equals the expected utility of voting, Cv equals the cost of voting, and D equals the expected difference in welfare per person if the voter’s preferred candidate defeats her opponent. Let Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. us further assume that this is a presidential election in a nation with three hundred million people, that the voter’s ballot has only a one in one hundred million chance of being decisive, and that the voter val- ues the welfare of his fellow citizens an average of a thousand times less than his own. 23 The figure of one in one hundred million is used for ease of exposition. Adopting the slightly more accurate figure of one in sixty million—the average odds of decisiveness in the 2008 presidential election—would not significantly alter the result. 24 80 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce Thus, we get the following equation: equation 3.1: The Utility of Voting D*(300 million/1000) / (100 million) − Cv = Uv If we assume that Cv is $10 (a reasonable proxy for the cost of voting) and that D is $5,000, then Uv equals $5, a small but real positive expected utility. In this simplified example, the benefits that the voter expects her fellow citizens to get from the victory of the “better” candidate are expressed in monetary terms. But they could just as easily be nonfinancial benefits, such as a better foreign policy or a cleaner environment. As long as the voter believes that these benefits, discounted by the likelihood that her vote will be decisive, outweigh the costs of voting, it is rational for her to vote. While it is extremely rare for elections to be decided by one vote, such events do occur, as in the case of two Georgia mayoral elections in 2009.25 The low probability of a one-vote margin of victory may be offset by the large expected benefits and the low cost of the act of voting itself. Actual voters are unlikely to calculate the costs and benefits of voting this precisely. But they might make an intuitive judgment incorporating very rough estimates of D and C. The point of this equation is not to pre- cisely simulate the decision-making processes of real-world voters, but to formalize the sorts of considerations that are likely to influence them in a less rigorous, more intuitive way. Furthermore, the fact that voting is a low-cost, low-benefit activity ensures that there is little benefit to engaging in precise calculations such Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. as these. So voters might rationally choose to go with a default option of voting and forgo any detailed analysis. 26 The cost of making a precise calculation could itself easily outweigh the benefit of saving time and money on voting. 27 It would therefore be rational to make do with a rough intuitive estimate—as people routinely do for many decisions in everyday life. That people do in fact make such rough calculations about the utility of voting is confirmed by the finding that people who believe there is a great difference between the opposing candidates are more likely to turn 81 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 out than those who believe that the difference is small, as well as by the fact that turnout is higher in elections that are expected to be close. 28 It is also reinforced by the sensitivity of turnout to relatively small poll taxes, which greatly reduced turnout in states that had them until the federal government banned them in the 1960s. 29 By contrast, the acquisition of political information in any significant quantity is a vastly more difficult and time-consuming enterprise than voting itself. Equation 3.2 illustrates this point. Assume that Upi equals the utility of acquiring sufficient political information to make a “correct” decision and Cpi equals the cost of acquiring political information. Thus: equation 3.2: The Utility of Acquiring Political Information for Voting Purposes D*(300 million/1000) / (100 million) − Cpi = Upi If we conservatively estimate Cpi at $100 by assuming that the voter need only expend ten hours to acquire and learn the necessary infor- mation while suffering opportunity costs of just $10 per hour, then the magnitude of D would have to be nearly seven times greater—$33,333 per citizen—in order for the voter to choose to make the necessary ex- penditure on information acquisition. It is unlikely that many otherwise ignorant voters will perceive such an enormous potential difference be- tween the opposing candidates as to invest even the equivalent of $100 in information acquisition. This theoretical prediction is consistent with the empirical observation that most citizens in fact know very little about Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. politics and public policy, but do vote. The analysis changes only slightly if the voter does not care about the welfare of the entire nation but only about that of a subset, such as his racial or ethnic group. Alternatively, he may care about everyone in the nation to at least some extent, but value the utility of some groups more than others. Similarly, it may be that the voter believes that his preferred candidates’ policies will benefit some groups more than others. In each case, we can still calculate the utility increase to whatever groups a voter does care about and discount it by the extent to which she cares about them less than about herself, and by the likelihood of 82 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce her vote being decisive. As long as the resulting number is greater than the cost of voting, it will still be rational to go to the polls. At the same time, the cost of acquiring information is still likely to make being well informed irrational. Sometimes, of course, voters may value different groups’ welfare unequally. For example, ethnocentrism leads some Americans to place greater emphasis on the welfare of members of their own racial or ethnic groups than others. 30 Equation 3.3 demonstrates the result that obtains if Equation 3.1 is modified to assume a voter who cares far more about the welfare of a subgroup of the population numbering fifty million than about the rest of the public, valuing members of that group five times as much as the rest. equation 3.3: The Utility of Voting, Assuming Unequal Valuation of Different Groups’ Welfare D*((250 million/1000) + (50 million/200)) / (100 million) − Cv = Uv In this example, Uv will turn out to be $8.33, a slightly higher figure than in Equation 3.1. At the same time, it would still be irrational for the voter to pay the costs of becoming adequately informed. Plugging the new estimates into Equation 3.2, the per-person difference in welfare would have to be over $20,000 in order to justify a decision to pay the price of becoming informed. As with the decision to vote itself, we need not assume that individual voters make a detailed and precise calculation about the costs and ben- Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. efits of information acquisition, or those of voting. They probably instead simply have an intuitive sense that there is little or no benefit to making a major effort to increase their knowledge about politics, and that such an effort would be far more costly than going to the polls and voting on the basis of very limited knowledge. Most people similarly assume with- out precise calculation that there is little benefit to acquiring information about such subjects as theoretical physics or cell biology, even though these bodies of knowledge also have great value to society as a whole. Indeed, the costs of the time and effort needed to make a truly precise calculation probably exceed the benefit for the vast majority of people. 83 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 Some scholars argue that the odds of a single vote being decisive are much lower than the equation used here.31 If their calculations are cor- rect, the incentive to acquire political knowledge is even lower than I suggest. It would then be irrational to vote unless the voter perceives an almost unimaginably great difference between the opposing candidates. In my view, the formula used here—largely adapted from the work of statistician Andrew Gelman and his colleagues—is more accurate than those that assign vastly lower probabilities of decisiveness.32 But little in my argument hinges on the difference between the two. Both lead to the conclusion that it is rational for voters to be ignorant about politics. Lower odds of decisiveness suggest that it is also irrational for most voters to cast a ballot. However, given the existence of disagreement among respected scholars, a rational voter might still choose to vote if he thought that Gelman’s model had some substantial chance of being cor- rect. If he believes that it has a 50 percent chance of being right, then he would assume that he has a 1 in 120 million chance of casting a decisive vote, as opposed to the 1 in 60 million estimated by Gelman. The latter figure is, of course, very similar to the 1 in 100 million used in Equa- tions 3.1 and 3.2. More realistically, the average citizen probably lacks the time and ex- pertise to study either the Gelman model or the alternatives. Unless he or she finds the reading interesting or has an extensive background in sta- tistics, the costs of doing the reading and analyzing the models would be far greater than the expected benefits.33 Thus the rational citizen could reasonably base his or her decisions on voting and acquiring political Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. information on a rough intuitive sense that the chance of decisiveness is extremely low, but still higher than zero. And that is exactly what most people actually seem to do. Why a Rationally Ignorant Voter Can Still Have Political Opinions An important objection to this attempt to reconcile rational ignorance with the paradox of voting is that a rationally ignorant voter who realizes that she has little political knowledge should not be confident about the validity of her judgment as to which candidate is better. She should as- 84 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce sume that her estimate of the benefits of her preferred candidate’s victory might also be inaccurate. Perhaps the rationally ignorant voter should be agnostic about the relative merits of the two candidates, a position that would once again make voting irrational. But this critique ignores the fact that the voter in question does not know in which direction her estimate is wrong, or by how much. She could potentially overestimate the benefits of her preferred candidate’s victory. But in the absence of contrary evidence, she should assume that there is at least an equal chance that she has underestimated those benefits. Assume that the best evidence known to the would-be voter suggests that the victory of Candidate A will give each citizen an average of $5,000 in benefits more than would a win for Candidate B. If the person in ques- tion has no reason to believe that she is more likely to overestimate than underestimate the relative merits of A and B, she must still assume that the expected benefit of the “right” candidate winning is $5,000 multi- plied by the number of citizens. Thus even an ignorant voter fully aware that her ignorance might cause her to estimate erroneously might still rationally choose to cast a ballot. Perhaps the mere recognition that many people disagree with her should lead the would-be voter to be less confident in her views. If she doesn’t know much about a subject, but does know enough to realize that there is a lot of opposition to her conclusions, maybe she should worry more about the possibility that she might be wrong. Perhaps those other people are on to something, possibly even because they know things that she does not. Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. Knowledge of such disagreement should not, however, lead the ratio- nal but ill-informed voter to become agnostic about her views. If the fact that many people disagree with her should give her pause, the fact that many others hold similar views should, with equal logic, reinforce her confidence. If you believe that the Democratic Party’s platform is, over- all, better for the country than that of the Republican Party, the fact that millions of Republicans disagree is a relevant consideration but one bal- anced by the fact that millions of Democrats feel the same way you do. It is possible that some of those Republicans know of flaws in the Democratic platform that you are unaware of. But by the same token, it’s 85 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 possible that some of the Democrats have information unknown to you proving that the Democratic platform is even better than you think it is. Maybe they also know of evidence showing that Republican policies are even worse than you previously believed. To be sure, a voter who has devoted only minimal time and effort to acquiring relevant information should not be as confident about her con- clusions as one who has investigated the relevant issues more carefully. But precisely because there is so little chance that her vote will have a decisive impact, even a modest degree of certainty might be enough to justify forming an opinion and voting on that basis. The amount of in- formation a rational person considers sufficient to make a decision that has very little chance of making a difference is much smaller than the amount needed to make a more consequential choice.34 In sum, the rational but relatively ignorant voter can still have opinions on political issues. Agnosticism is not the only rational stance to take in the face of ignorance and uncertainty. The argument here does not assume that most real-world voters are perfectly rational in their evaluation of the information they possess. In- deed, I conclude the opposite.35 The point is that even an ignorant voter who did rationally evaluate his limited stock of information might still con- clude that one party is superior to the other and cast his ballot accordingly. This conclusion undercuts claims that rational ignorance would be harmless if voters did not also engage in irrational evaluation of the in- formation they have—a theory that rests on the assumption that a per- son who knows he has little information about political issues would Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. rationally remain agnostic about them. 36 If the voter knows he has little information but still believes that the evidence he does have comes down on one side of an issue, he would be rational to hold to that belief in the absence of further information, given that he does not know whether he erred by agreeing with that side too much or too little. 37 What If Voters Care About the Size of the Winner’s “Mandate”? The analysis described in the previous section does not change if voters value the margin of victory for their preferred candidate as well as the 86 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce victory itself.38 For example, a voter might want her preferred candidate to win by a large margin rather than a small one in order to be able to claim a more impressive “mandate” for her party’s platform. Conversely, if the voter supports the losing candidate in an election, she might prefer the winner’s margin of victory to be as small as possible. In reality, the electorate rarely conveys a clear “mandate” for extensive policy change for the winners, and political elites rarely come to the conclusion that one exists.39 Still, a voter might overestimate the likelihood that any given election will be perceived as creating a mandate, or might believe that the current election is an exceptional case. Either way, it is still far less costly to cast a ballot than to become in- formed about issues. Moreover, the chances of an individual vote being decisive to the size of a “mandate” are still likely to be infinitesimally small, just as are those of winning. After all, it is highly unlikely that any significant number of voters value the difference between their preferred candidate getting 58 percent of the vote and getting 58.0000001 percent. Rather, what matters to some is something like the difference between a “small” mandate and a medium-size or “big” one. Perhaps, for example, public opinion sees a 58–42 margin as a decisive “landslide,” while a 57– 43 margin is considered merely a “normal” victory. The chance that any one vote will make the decisive difference between a small mandate and a medium or big one is no greater than the likelihood that it will make the difference between winning and losing, and may even be smaller.40 There are several other important reasons to believe that the paradox of voting does not invalidate a collective action problem explanation of Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. voter ignorance.41 First, it is possible that the unexpectedly high incidence of voting is simply the result of people overestimating the potential impact of their vote.42 Survey data suggest that more than 70 percent of voters believe that their individual votes “really matter.”43 This should not be taken to mean that the survey respondents necessarily believe that their votes are highly likely to make a difference to electoral outcomes. The term “really matter” is somewhat ambiguous, and could merely indicate a belief that voting is valuable even if it only has a small chance of affecting the outcome. But it could nonetheless mean that voters overestimate the likelihood of casting a decisive ballot, at least to some degree. 87 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 Such overestimation may in fact be rational to the extent that ac- quiring an accurate knowledge of the impact of voting may for many be more expensive than the relatively modest effort required to vote in major elections. If so, it is plausible to hypothesize that the degree of overesti- mation is great enough to stimulate voting but far too small to stimulate the much greater investment of time and effort necessary to acquire a substantial amount of political information. Voters who don’t take the time to calculate the numbers could readily conclude that their chance of influencing the outcome of a presidential election is, say, one in ten million, rather than one in sixty million or one in one hundred million. But it seems highly unlikely that they would conclude that the true prob- ability is one in ten or one in twenty, or some other number high enough to justify a major expenditure of time and effort on seeking out and ana- lyzing political information. Second, even if the paradox of voting really is explainable by the “ex- pressive utility” of voting or by “irrational” conceptions of duty,44 it is still possible that such motives are not powerful enough to induce voters to pay the heavy costs of becoming well informed. Indeed, if voters cast ballots out of a sense of duty, that is a reason why they would go to the polls even without being well informed. The same point applies if voters go to the polls in order to be able to tell others they did so, as suggested by one recent study.45 Similarly, if the voter simply wants to express his or her views regardless of whether they are backed by adequate knowl- edge, that too can lead to ill-informed voting. The empirical evidence showing that voter knowledge levels are very low is of course consistent Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. with such scenarios. However, the expressive utility explanation of voting has various weaknesses. If the voter’s sole objective is simply to express his views in a public way,46 it is not clear why the same objective couldn’t be more eas- ily achieved simply by staying home and telling people who you support in conversation or in a phone call. Better still, in the age of the Internet, the would-be voter could instead send an e-mail or put up a social media post announcing his electoral preference to as many people as he can. This would be a more clear expression of preference than casting a vote in a secret ballot election in which no one can see what the voter decides. 88 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce If, on the other hand, the voter merely desires to express her views on the election without necessarily revealing them to others, she has the op- tion of simply stating them aloud while no one else is present or writing them down in a document that she never shows to anyone. All of these options are likely to be easier and less time-consuming than going to the polls. Yet few if any voters view such activities as a substitute for cast- ing a ballot. The duty-based explanation for voting is likely true, at least for many voters.47 However, it is complementary to the rational choice explanation rather than a competitor with it. After all, it is not clear why voters would feel a duty to undertake an action that makes no difference. The reason why a voter who cares about the welfare of his or her fellow citizens is likely to feel a duty to vote is because of the perception that doing so could make a difference, at least potentially. A similar analysis applies if the voter chooses to vote merely because others might ask about it, and think less of him if he says he did not cast a ballot.48 Presumably, the reason why the nonvoter’s reputation would suffer is that the questioners believe that he violated a civic duty, and they believe in the existence of that civic duty because his vote can make a meaningful contribution to society. Rational Ignorance or Just Plain Simple Ignorance? A plausible alternative to the theory of rational ignorance is the idea that widespread political ignorance is just an honest mistake. Given the com- plexity of the political world, it is possible that voters are “inadvertently” ignorant, simply unaware that there is a body of information out there Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. that might improve the quality of their political decisions if they learned it.49 Instead of rational ignorance, low levels of political knowledge could be the result of just plain simple ignorance. The biggest difficulty with the inadvertent ignorance theory is that it fails to explain why so many people are ignorant even of very basic facts about politics. Simple intuition suggests that, to be an adequately informed voter, it might help to know the names of the opposing can- didates, the major policies adopted by the government in recent years, and which officials are responsible for which issues. If one is planning to cast a vote based on the state of the economy, it should not be hard to 89 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  chapter 3 figure out that it might help to check the data on whether the economy has grown or shrunk recently. Such basic information is readily available in the media and, now, on the Internet. Yet a large percentage of the public, often a majority, fails to learn it. If you are planning to purchase a TV, it is not difficult to fig- ure out that you will make a better decision if you acquire some basic information about the price, reliability, and picture quality of compet- ing brands. Even a person with little knowledge of the TV market can readily grasp that much. The TV consumer who fails to get that basic information is unlikely to do so simply through mere “inadvertence.” If he remains ignorant on such points, it is likely because he doesn’t care very much about the choice of a TV or because he prefers to devote the time and effort needed to acquire that information to other pursuits that he considers more important. The same point applies to voters’ failure to acquire basic political information. Moreover, if political ignorance is inadvertent, one would expect knowledge levels to increase substantially over time as education levels have risen and political information becomes more widely available at lower cost, thanks to modern technology. Today’s denser media environ- ment and the ready availability of an enormous range of information on the Internet make it harder than ever to remain completely unaware that there are whole bodies of knowledge that are relevant to political deci- sions. The more education one has and the more political information is readily available, the higher the likelihood that individuals will be exposed to the idea that there are vast stores of knowledge available that could Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. help them inform their voting decisions. Yet, as previously noted, politi- cal knowledge levels have risen little if at all over the past several decades, despite major increases in education and the availability of information.50 Another telling point of evidence against the inadvertent ignorance theory is the different behavior of jurors relative to voters, even though both groups are drawn from the same population, with jurors usually being selected from voter rolls. When citizens decide a case as jurors, they typically make far greater effort to acquire relevant information and evaluate it in an unbiased way than ballot box voters do at election time.51 The key difference between the two situations is that jurors have 90 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4780595. Created from bibliotecaie-ebooks on 2021-10-26 14:55:20.  t h e r at iona li t y of poli t ic a l ignor a nce a far greater chance of making a difference to the outcome than ballot box voters do. In most trials, there are only somewhere between six and twelve jurors, thereby magnifying the importance of each vote. 52 In many cases, every single juror, in effect, casts a decisive vote, because the law requires a unanimous verdict. As a result, they take their responsibilities far more seriously than most ballot box voters do. 53 If political ignorance were largely inadvertent, we would expect ju- rors to behave similarly, despite the great difference in incentives. But the very different behavior of jurors strongly suggests that many voters would make greater efforts to inform themselves if their votes had a comparably high probability of influencing outcomes. The fact that voters are often unaware of even basic political informa- tion and that this ignorance has persisted in the face of rising education levels and the information technology revolution is hard to reconcile with the idea that ignorance is merely inadvertent “simple” ignorance. The same is true of the divergence in behavior between voters and jurors. On the other hand, it is clearly consistent with rational ignorance. Demand for information, not supply, is the main constraint on political learning in a world where most people are rationally ignorant about politics. Other Examples of Rational Ignorance Political ignorance is hardly unique. Public ignorance is also common on a wide range of other issues, including basic science, geography, and his- tory. For example, more than 20 percent of the population in both the United States and Europe does not know that the earth revolves around Copyright © 2016. Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. the sun rather than vice versa.54 A 2009 Gallup poll found that only 39 percent of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” with 25 percent rejecting evolution and 36 percent saying they have no opin- ion.55 A 2006 National Geographic Foundation study found widespread ignorance of basic geography among young adults, with 63 percent un- able to find Iraq on a map (despite extensive news coverage accorded to the country because of the ongoing Iraq War), 88 percent unable to find Afghanistan (where U.S. forces were also engaged in combat), and ma- jorities also unable to find major states such as New York on a map of the United States.56 91 Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance : Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecaie-ebooks/de