Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan Reasoning and Promotes Democratic Accountability

by Kevin Arceneaux, Ryan J. Vander Wielen

The success of democratic governance hinges on an electorate's ability to reward elected officials who act faithfully and punish those who do not. Yet there is considerable variation among voters in their ability to objectively evaluate representatives' performance. In this book the authors develop a theoretical model, the Intuitionist Model of Political Reasoning, which posits that this variation across voters is the result of individual differences in the predisposition to reflect on and to override partisan impulses. Individuals differ in partisan intuitions resulting from the strength of their attachments to parties, as well as the degree to which they are willing to engage in the cognitively taxing process of evaluating those intuitions. The balance of these forces - the strength of intuitions and the willingness to second guess one's self - determines the extent to which individuals update their assessments of political parties and elected officials in a rational manner.

260 pages, Hardcover

Published August 11, 2017

Reviews

[Perham Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is democracy doomed? Are voters rational? Can the public successfully put the right people in office and vote the wrong people out? You decide! After reading this book and doing some long hard thinking of course.

This is an academic book and it took me 6 months of on-and-off effort to get through it, but I'd still recommend it to anyone with an interest in psychology and/or politics.

[Ago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arceneaux and Vander Wielen make an important contribution to the partisanship literature, which is particularly long, intricate, and difficult to talk about parsimoniously. Using compelling arguments but also very good writing they manage to reorganize many pieces of the literature into a useful model for political scientists.

As a young scholar, this book is a reminder that sometimes the ideas are there, waiting to be organized into new and useful forms.