Article content

What if democracy does not work the way that we think it does? What if voters cannot actually control politicians in a way that ensures better policy? In Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels – two giants in the study of American politics – suggest that we may have our understanding of democracy all wrong.

The conventional view is the following: voters hold politicians to account through two basic mechanisms. One, they observe and evaluate the performance of politicians in office. They re-elect those politicians who perform well and they throw out those who perform poorly. Think of this as retrospective sanctioning. Second, they use past performance as a guide to future performance, and they choose to re-elect only the politicians who will do a good job into the future. Think of this as retrospective selection.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Loewen: Voters may not be as smart as we think (or hope) they are Back to video

According to some conventional accounts of democracy, these systems work. Voters toss out incumbents in hard times and retain them in good times. Even if voters are not sophisticated or close analysts of politics, they can keep a rough ledger of government performance – or they can be informed by others they trust – and can thus make rational choices.