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Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

by Christopher H. Achen, Larry M. Bartels

4.14 · Rating details · 193 Ratings · 38 Reviews

"Democracy for Realists" assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens.

Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics rangi ...more

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Hardcover, 408 pages

Published April 19th 2016 by Princeton University Press

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Jan 17, 2017 Nick Geiser rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-politics

"Democracy for Realists" is a rich and sobering assessment of the state of democracy. The book is at once a literature review, an empirical contribution, and an agenda proposal for the future study of democracy.

It's structured around critiques of two leading theories of democracy: the "folk" or "populist" theory, and the theory of retrospective accountability. Populists hold that democracy involves political equality and popular control of policy, in which elections translate voters' preference "Democracy for Realists" is a rich and sobering assessment of the state of democracy. The book is at once a literature review, an empirical contribution, and an agenda proposal for the future study of democracy.

It's structured around critiques of two leading theories of democracy: the "folk" or "populist" theory, and the theory of retrospective accountability. Populists hold that democracy involves political equality and popular control of policy, in which elections translate voters' preferences into policy outcomes. Retrospective accountability is a less ambitious theory of democracy, which holds that periodic elections allow parties to experiment with different policies and voters to assess these experiments. Achen and Bartels summarize an extensive theoretical and empirical literature criticizing both theories.

In brief, the populist or folk theory of democracy fails because voters lack well-formed preferences and cannot translate these preferences into meaningful choices. Beginning with Philip Converse's studies of voter knowledge in the 1960s, political scientists have shown lack the political knowledge to connect their political preferences to electoral and policy choices. Voters also have contradictory policy preferences such as for lower taxes and more extensive public services. Retrospective accountability fails because voters are not very good at attributing responsibility for policy outcomes or judging the real effects of policy. In a particularly humorous example, Achen and Bartels show how a spate of shark attacks on the Jersey Shore before the presidential election in 1916 led voters to turn against Woodrow Wilson. Voters punish incumbents randomly and ineffectively, contrary to the requirements of retrospective accountability.

Achen and Bartels propose an alternative theory of elections in which group identity rather than policy preferences or retrospective accountability is the primary cause of voter behavior. Voters' sense of social distance to candidates and group affiliation with candidates determines their choices.

"Democracy for Realists" may seem like a depressing book. However, I found it to be quite a hopeful read. If we can put to rest the bad arguments for democracy, we can identify more clearly and confidently why democracy has value. That's a reason to be hopeful. ...more

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Dec 26, 2016 Ira rated it liked it

On the tube, book open, hardback, head down, three quarters in.
Man interrupts: Sorry I couldn't help noticing what you are reading. It sounds timely! Is it any good?
Me: It's ok, not as Machiavellian as it may sound. The main...
Man interrupts: What's the argument? You must be into it I see you put yellow post-it notes throughout.
Me: The main idea is that democracy as practiced has nothing to do with sovereignty of the p...
Man interrupts: Would you recommend it?
Me: Not the hardback version ...
Man ...more

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Sep 20, 2016 Eve rated it liked it

THis was a tough read since I'm not a political scientist and I don't understand a lot of the jargon. The overall point was interesting and thought provoking; I think that the intro/conclusion would be worth reading carefully for the non-academics out there and then maybe skim the rest?
I think that the authors outline the problem - too much democracy is not the solution to the problems that ail our democracy - but, as they themselves say, they don't really have solutions. But they do an excellen ...more

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Jun 03, 2016 Carl rated it liked it

Shelves: politics

How do voters affect the political process? The folk theory says voters are knowledgable about issues & about candidates positions on the issues & they select the candidate who mostly closely reflects their preferences. FALSE! Voters know very little about the issues, are not willing or able to invest the time & study in becoming knowledgeable & besides optimizing a choice of candidate is impossible (Arrow). Voters retrospectively reward good performance & punish malfeasance. ...more

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Oct 01, 2016 Ruby rated it really liked it

"The problem is not that voters are necessarily irrational, but that most voters have very little real information, even about crucially important aspects of national political life."

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Mar 13, 2017 Jill marked it as to-read

Recommended by: The Weeds (podcast) from Vox.

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Jul 27, 2017 columbialion rated it liked it

This book is not recommended for the general or a casual political reader, as it comprises a highly detailed, scholarly statistical analysis of other in depth political works from the mid-1800's to the present, attempting to explain how and why American voters vote in the manner in which they do. The book mostly tries to answer the fundamental question: Do elections result in serving voters needs, or are they simply an exercise of a random process where the input of the votes originate from a la This book is not recommended for the general or a casual political reader, as it comprises a highly detailed, scholarly statistical analysis of other in depth political works from the mid-1800's to the present, attempting to explain how and why American voters vote in the manner in which they do. The book mostly tries to answer the fundamental question: Do elections result in serving voters needs, or are they simply an exercise of a random process where the input of the votes originate from a largely uneducated, ignorant, and myopic voting public?
The compiled data within the book is huddled around two competing political theories of processes to which an average voter employs in selecting a candidate. Both theories apply to incumbents and challengers.
The first theory the author's present is termed ‘Populist Democracy" or "folk democracy." Within the theory lies the assumption that voters implicitly employ rational analysis when making voting decisions. These are based on awareness of associated policy connotations of various candidates, as well as political and psychological affiliations with party elites. The second theory of electoral mechanics identified is "Retrospective Accountability." Simply put, it is the idea that voters scrutinize past performances of politicians in office, as a method for forecasting future performance. In general terms, voters who experience pain, be it direct or perceived, economic or otherwise, tend to "throw the bums out" by voting for challengers of another party. The fallacy here is that the voting decisions based on this theory are myopic to the degree that politics and policy are not congruent. When one considers that global citizens are massively ignorant about particular policy machinations, and thus vote incorrectly, resulting in holding incumbents responsible for actions and circumstances which they are not liable. The authors used a laughable example highlighting the 1919 re-election of Woodrow Wilson. Apparently, there had been a series of shark attacks along the Jersey shore which resulted in two fatalities, the beaches that summer were closed, and the beach merchants hostility to the lack any "government action" actually dealing with the attacks, translated into votes cast for Wilson's challenger Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt subsequently carried the Jersey shore districts by a vast majority.
Another significant influence upon which the authors identify as having considerable influence in producing inept election results is inherent, ingrained ideologies and pre-determined group controls. Numerous studies have demonstrated that most citizens of democratic countries have little interest in politics and do not follow the news of public affairs beyond browsing headlines. As stated before, they do not know details of even salient policy debates, nor a firm understanding of even what political parties stand for. As a result, they often vote for parties whose long-standing issue positions are at odds with these voters. Mostly these voters identify with ethnic, racial, occupational, religious, and other sorts of groups, and often- whether thru group ties or hereditary loyalties- with a political party. Even the more attentive citizens mostly adopt the policy positions of the parties as their own: they are mirrors of the parties, not masters. For most citizens most of the time, party and group loyalties are the primary drivers of voting choice.
Hence we can see the disconnect when sovereignty rests with the people. A government derives its just powers, not merely from the "consent of the governed" but from their political judgments. Within that framework of understanding, we can see how overwhelmingly exists the likelihood for voters to vote incorrectly. Thus producing, as in our case, POTUS 45, or in the most extreme, the most disastrous democratic election result of the 20th Century; the election of Adolf Hitler.
In the end, Democracy for Realists offers no solutions to the dilemma, but does clearly document the conditions upon which reside our political future. ...more

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Jul 11, 2017 Nayef Ahmad rated it it was amazing

As the internet will tell you, 2016 was a disappointing year for democracy. Brexit, Trump, democratic decline in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Israel, Venezuela ... Surely something has gone terribly wrong with the way we do democracy? According to the authors of this book, no, it's more like electoral democracy never really worked very well.

If you don't have the time to read the whole book, just read the final chapter (31 pages). In it, the authors summarize decades of research showing that the way ...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Saul Shanabrook rated it really liked it

To be honest I skipped a bunch of the middle chapters. I was just looking for the answers! Alas, this book doesn't really have many, besides "make society more equal" and "reduce the effect of money on politics".

The book was still immensely helpful, because it shook me of the naive view that we should be giving more power to individual citizens to have a direct impact on the political process.

My initial fears about the book, that two white dudes in Western academia would be constrained in their ...more

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Feb 24, 2017 Nathan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: political-science

4.5

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Jun 11, 2017 Daniel Lambauer rated it really liked it

this is an extremely well researched with tons of very good data, and despite its academic tone, easy to read analysis of the fundamental issues with modern democracies in an information-heavy age. however, i am not sure if one of their central premises - that party loyalty drives views, and that therefore people get entrenched in their party choices - still holds after the recent european elections in 2017 (eg france, uk). perhaps we can be more hopeful than the authors suggest, at least in eur ...more

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Nov 18, 2016 Billie Pritchett rated it liked it

Shelves: politics, political-science

Authors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels are down on democracy in Democracy for Realists. It's an odd book to me because it tends to conflate the way things ought to be with the way things are. Achen and Bartels' thesis is that the way that virtually all so-called democracies work is that people vote on the basis of group loyalties, prior commitments to certain social identities they have, rather than on issues or anything else, and party loyalties shift when groups feel they can court and de ...more

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Oct 18, 2016 Diego rated it really liked it

Shelves: democracy-politics, located-in-seattle

My intent was to read this and become a better informed citizen and voter prior to the election. It is pretty eye opening. Statistical analysis to show that humans don't know what is going on politically, just believe what's easy, have grown up with beliefs, or base their beliefs from like groups. Majority of people don't seem to be willing to change their beliefs, or be open to it, or they skew facts to align with their personal belief logic.
I would like to say this is a must read for all citiz ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Tonstant Weader rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics

Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government takes a long hard look at our cherished notions about democracy and stomps them into ashes. However, as painful as the process is, any long observer of politics and elections will know they are telling us, with substantial evidence to make their case, some very hard truths. For those of us who hope for a more just world, it is time to pay attention.

There is no good news here. The authors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government takes a long hard look at our cherished notions about democracy and stomps them into ashes. However, as painful as the process is, any long observer of politics and elections will know they are telling us, with substantial evidence to make their case, some very hard truths. For those of us who hope for a more just world, it is time to pay attention.

There is no good news here. The authors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels analyze decades of electoral data and research, their own and that of other political scientist researchers. From shark attacks to deficits, Achen and Bartels demonstrate that voters lack the information and skills needed to make informed, rational decisions. Even the most informed and politically engaged voters vote based more on group identity than ideology or issue preferences. In fact, people choose their parties often based on social identity and then adjust their policy preferences to match their party. In contrast to most of the pundits, Achen and Bartels recognize that whiteness is a social identity and identity politics are not limited to people of color and women.

Aches and Bartels believe that most reforms are misguided, adding to the problem rather than improving it. Reducing the power of political parties has reduced the pressure to compromise and made the partisan divide wider. It has also made politicians less responsive to voters.

I can see this happening here in Oregon, the increased use of initiative and referendum has led to fiscal chaos, with voters demanding spending projects at the same time they vote for tax cuts. Referendum has led to a passive legislature who no longer tries to address the failed revenue system because there is no reward for having the political courage to vote for taxes when they will be referred and defeated at the next election. Likewise, many reformers want term limits, stripping politicians of expertise and empowering lobbyists. Reducing the power of parties has led the demagogue Trump whom no responsible party would nominate, the end of compromise and hyper-partisanship.

They argue that reform should recognize the importance of parties. I am sure the clamor to eliminate super delegates is exactly the opposite of the reform necessary. We saw the powerlessness of Republican super delegates to save their party. The removal of ear marks has reduced the power of party discipline to govern efficiently and effectively – damaging our national credit rating.

Democracy For Realists is not happy reading. It takes our glib truisms such as the cure for the problems of democracy is more democracy. I think recognizing that it is impossible for voters to understand every issue, it makes sense to strengthen parties as a proxy because they do cluster ideologically. There is expertise and experience, and if the parties are stronger, there is more accountability. Sadly, it seems the tide is going in the wrong direction, toward a more and more disassociated electorate, with weaker and weaker parties, and ever-increasing power of the plutocrats and interest groups.

This is an important book that I would wish everyone read, though the authors made no effort whatsoever to be readable for the general public. This is so important, I wish they could have made more effort to write a book that would be read by a broader audience than activists and politic professionals.

★★★★
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpres... ...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Spencer rated it really liked it

I won't do much to review the book since there are plenty of other good reviews. See the main argument. It's good.

After looking at why the folk idea of democracy, as articulated by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," fails in reality (due to a number of reasons but basically people vote their identities rather than for their own interests), they conclude that “At the moment, America is a democracy, but it is not very democrati ...more

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Jun 15, 2017 Kristofer rated it it was ok

This book was really a 2.5. The authors show various areas where direct democracy breaks down. If you aren't familiar with Arrow's Impossibility Theorem or survey research on partisan bias this book could be interesting for you. If on the other hand you are familiar with those sorts of results then this book doesn't really offer anything new.

Many of the statistics presented in the book are represented has have much more statistical power than they actually do so take the statistical results wit ...more

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Jun 26, 2017 JQAdams rated it liked it

This is a hard book to review as a whole. Large chunks of it are very academic-y, and feel like the authors had scholarly papers that they couldn't get published elsewhere so they threw in here. (Diminishing returns had set in well before the third chapter on retrospective economic voting, which is the tendency for voters to punish or reward incumbent politicians based on how the economy was doing in the few months before the election regardless of whether the incumbents had any control over or ...more

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Jun 09, 2017 Paul Skorupskas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017

A rather cynical and depressing but thorough and sobering view of democracy. The authors do an excellent job of delivering the hard truths that our society has long ignores or simply tries to wish away.

It reads a lot like an academic text, because it is. However, I found it incredibly interesting. Something that anyone who has ever taken an American civics class should read. Sadly, it is not written in a way that many would find entertaining, especially considering the subject matter. Neverthel ...more

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Jun 05, 2017 Ceil rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics-and-government

Interesting survey of political science thinking on why the US political system works the way it does - the "realist" approach does have the hallmark of what we lay people often think of as "really? They paid you to discover this?": Rather than making rational choices about party and candidate loyalty -based either on prospective or retrospective assessments of their positions - people first choose the groups they affiliate with, then select the candidates who feel like they best represent those ...more

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Aug 09, 2017 Tobias rated it really liked it

Absolutely devastates what they call "folk" theories of democracy and proposes a new theory based on group identities that certainly feels truer. Some of the middle chapters in which they use quantitative analysis to challenge various theories of democracy are a slog, but the final chapters where they build their own theory makes it worth the slog.

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Jun 09, 2017 Dustin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics, social-science

A lot more research is needed, but their argument/conclusions are important. Reminds me of the Churchill quote, "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

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Aug 04, 2017 John Martin rated it really liked it

It's amazing that this book was published in 2016. We'd like to think that ideas and facts shape voter behavior, but so much of what drives people's political choices has to do with their cultural identities.

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Jul 26, 2017 Ben Kraft rated it it was amazing

Goodreads asks, "What did you think?". Well I'm not sure what I think about democracy anymore, but it was a good book!

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Jun 27, 2017 Ryan Bertl rated it liked it

A good read even if it can be pedantic and dry at times; a revealing look at what actually drives voter behavior.

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Aug 25, 2016 Jason Furman rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, politics, social_science

Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels painstakingly amass evidence and arguments against what they describe as the two leading theories of democracy. The first is the "folk theory" that Democracy allows the will of the people to be expressed, something they dismantle with evidence on voters' lack of knowledge in both choosing their representatives and, especially, in Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels painstakingly amass evidence and arguments against what they describe as the two leading theories of democracy. The first is the "folk theory" that Democracy allows the will of the people to be expressed, something they dismantle with evidence on voters' lack of knowledge in both choosing their representatives and, especially, in referendums. They also throw in some Arrow Impossibility Theorem arguments around the indeterminacy of the "will of the people" even if everyone was well informed but had views that differed along multiple dimensions. The second theory they dismantle is the agency theory or "throw the bums out", where they show that much of the voting based on performance is actually about luck (e.g., natural disasters or shark attacks) not performance. I would note, however, that they may overstate their case--disasters shift votes by a few percentage points, which can tilt an election but only because the two sides were within a few percentage points of each other to begin with which, itself, merits an explanation--like the median voter theorem.

The book attempts to develop an alternative theory based on people's group identities and social psychology. They have some fascinating analysis--for example, the shift of white Southerners from the Democratic to Republican Party in the Civil Rights era was concentrated less among people who had specific issue preferences on racial issues and more among people who identified as Southern. They also find that Democratic and Republican men have views of abortion that line up with their political leanings, but that it was their views on abortion that changed to match their parties not the other way around. As interesting as all of this is, Achen and Bartels essentially admit is just an early attempt at an alternative normative and positive theory of democracy. And the policy recommendations in the book are limited to the last few pages, are relatively thin (e.g., less economic inequality and money in politics), and do not necessarily follow uniquely from the analysis itself. ...more

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Dec 19, 2016 UChicagoLaw added it

Shelves: faculty-recommendations, 2016-faculty-recommendations

This bracing and generally quite readable book by two political scientists punctures various myths about democracy as manifesting the “will of the people.” Voters, they find, often adjust their views to fit those of the candidate of their party, rather than choosing candidates and parties based on how well they comport with the voters’ own views on policy questions. Most voters are massively ignorant about policy questions, economics events, and even basic questions of cause and effect. Voters a This bracing and generally quite readable book by two political scientists punctures various myths about democracy as manifesting the “will of the people.” Voters, they find, often adjust their views to fit those of the candidate of their party, rather than choosing candidates and parties based on how well they comport with the voters’ own views on policy questions. Most voters are massively ignorant about policy questions, economics events, and even basic questions of cause and effect. Voters are unable to distinguish between events for which leaders bear causal responsibility and those they don’t—voters have punished incumbents, for example, for floods, droughts, and even shark attacks in one case. Achen and Bartels argue, instead, that it is “group identity”—racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, sometimes geographic—that drives party identification, which in turn drives voting behavior. Only at the margins do ideological preferences impact decisions. Written before the 2016 Presidential election, it seems particularly helpful in understanding it. Republican voters supported a Republican nominee who had rejected many staples of the Republican brand since Reagan: they adjusted their views to the candidate. African-Americans did not turn out for Clinton as they had for Obama, a member of their group, and that depressed turnout was disastrous for Clinton. One of the few groups that seems to have been moved by ideological concerns were the white union voters who switched to the Republicans under Trump in 2016 from Obama in prior elections, primarily because he (like Bernie Sanders) spoke to a shared sense that various international trade agreements had hurt American industrial workers. Yet even that group seemed unaware that most of Trump’s concrete policy proposals would not benefit them. Although the authors try to derive some hopeful morals from this picture of democracy in practice, it seems clear that the traditional picture of an informed citizenry deliberating about what is best for the polity is pure fiction.

—Brian Leiter ...more

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Sep 29, 2016 Hadrian rated it really liked it

Shelves: usa, politics-and-foreign-policy, nonfiction, social-justice

Scathing analysis of voting habits and patterns, with somber implications for representative government.

Starts with what they call the 'folk theory' of democracy, described in Anthony Down's An Economic Theory of Democracy, which applies rational choice theory to democracy in choosing political representatives. There's also the work of V. O. Key, where voters evaluate political candidates based on economic performance.

Achen and Bartels compile multiple empirical studies which demonstrate the o ...more

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Nov 26, 2016 Nate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy, politics

The book's central thesis, that human beings are primarily social animals who engage in politics on the basis of their social identities rather than abstract ideologies about government, is well-defended. The book definitely shifted me towards this point of view (I wasn't vehemently opposed before, but I placed more credence in theories of retrospective voting prior to reading this book).

The book also benefits from having a thesis that is consistent with the rise of Trump without being a retros ...more

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Oct 27, 2016 Worth rated it really liked it

Should be required reading for any American voter... (Alas, that ain't gonna' happen--which is all too apparent after reading the book.) Among the cures for our would-be democracy, "more democracy" perhaps shouldn't be on the list?!--how do we good enlightened Americans wrap our heads around that bit of wisdom?! The dialectic of "more democracy"..."In the end it is the folk theory [of democracy] that props up elite rule, and it is unrepresentative elites that most profit from the convenient [myt ...more

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May 24, 2016 Richard marked it as to-read

Recommended to Richard by: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opi...

Shelves: nonfiction, social-political, at-sfsu

Sounds deep. See this essay by the authors: Do Sanders Supporters Favor His Policies?

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