Review of Democracy for Realists
One of the first posts I made on this blog was a review of The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan. That book convinced me that retrospective voting, mostly politicians' fear of it, is the greatest part of what makes democracy work in practice. And we do need to explain why democracy works in practice, because the evidence is that it does. Democracy causes countries to be more peaceful , richer , and when women were given the vote childhood mortality went down . So there does seem to be something to this democracy business where we have to explain. In Democracy for Realists Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels set out to "assail 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." Well, that's not the only thing you could investigate about democracies. You could look at: How individual peop