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Democracy for Realists : Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government / Larry M. Bartels, Christopher H. Achen.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Princeton Studies in Political Behavior ; 4Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2017]Copyright date: ©2017Description: 1 online resource (408 p.) : 26 b/w illus., 18 tablesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691178240
  • 9781400888740
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 321.8 23
LOC classification:
  • JK1726
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Democratic Ideals and Realities -- The Elusive Mandate: Elections and the Mirage of Popular Control -- Tumbling Down into a Democratical Republick: "Pure Democracy" and the Pitfalls of Popular Control -- A Rational God of Vengeance and of Reward ? The Logic of Retrospective Accountability -- Blind Retrospection: Electoral Responses to Droughts, Floods, and Shark Attacks -- Musical Chairs: Economic Voting and the Specious Present -- A Chicken in Every Pot: Ideology and Retrospection in the Great Depression -- The Very Basis of Reasons: Groups, Social Identities, and Political Psychology -- Partisan Hearts and Spleens: Social Identities and Political Change -- It Feels Like We're Thinking: The Rationalizing Voter -- Groups and Power: Toward a Realist Theory of Democracy -- Appendix: Retrospective Voting as Selection and Sanctioning -- Afterword to the Paperback Edition -- References -- Index
Summary: 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 ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters-even those who are well informed and politically engaged-mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly.Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400888740

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Democratic Ideals and Realities -- The Elusive Mandate: Elections and the Mirage of Popular Control -- Tumbling Down into a Democratical Republick: "Pure Democracy" and the Pitfalls of Popular Control -- A Rational God of Vengeance and of Reward ? The Logic of Retrospective Accountability -- Blind Retrospection: Electoral Responses to Droughts, Floods, and Shark Attacks -- Musical Chairs: Economic Voting and the Specious Present -- A Chicken in Every Pot: Ideology and Retrospection in the Great Depression -- The Very Basis of Reasons: Groups, Social Identities, and Political Psychology -- Partisan Hearts and Spleens: Social Identities and Political Change -- It Feels Like We're Thinking: The Rationalizing Voter -- Groups and Power: Toward a Realist Theory of Democracy -- Appendix: Retrospective Voting as Selection and Sanctioning -- Afterword to the Paperback Edition -- References -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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 ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters-even those who are well informed and politically engaged-mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly.Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)