Reddit reviews Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior (4))
We found 9 Reddit comments about Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior (4)). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
A great companion piece is Democracy for Realists by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels.
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.
I'm going to skip over a lot of the specific examples you've presented because a) in the American context I don't think they are an accurate representation and b) in the comparative context I'm woefully ignorant. But in general I think you should check out Stealth Democracy by Hibbing and Theiss-Morris. It's central finding is that Americans claim to be small-d democratic but they underestimate how difficult governing actually is. They think the fact that things don't magically get done to match their preferences must be due to the incompetence/corruption of the elected representatives and so tend to favor empowering technocrats and businessmen instead of "career politicians."
You also seem to be overestimating how ideological the average person is. To be frank, most people don't think much about concepts like "democracy" and couldn't give you a particularly precise definition. So they're happy to say that they support democracy while also not having a clear view of what that entails (or, as a friend of mine likes to say: "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.") On this point you may want to check out Neither Liberal nor Conservative by Kinder and Kalmoe. Democracy for Realists by Achen and Bartels is another good read.
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>Anybody who claims to have the winning formula for winning moderate, independent or undecided voters is making things up. Perhaps more centrist policies will appeal to some voters in each of these categories — but so will more extreme policies.12
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>And come election day, these potential swing voters may not ultimately care all that much about policy. They don’t tend to identify themselves based on ideology, and they don’t follow politics all that closely. They’re more likely to decide based on whatever random events happen at the last minute (like, say, a letter from the FBI director). These are even harder to measure and generalize about. (The good news for pundits and campaigns is that they leave even more room for open speculation and political fortune-telling.)
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>But OK, one final point needs clarification here — maybe we’re being too literal: Maybe what pundits are really getting at when they talk about appealing to “moderates,” “independents” or undecided voters is the “middle-est” middle of the electorate — in terms of vote choice, partisanship and ideology. Maybe they’re talking about people who identify as moderate, independent and are still undecided on 2020 — the part of the Venn diagram above where all three circles overlap.
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>First, this is a really small group — only 2.4 percent of the electorate falls in all three buckets. And even this super small middle of the middle is … you guessed it … all over the ideological map. Rare as these voters are, anybody who talks about winning over undecided, independent, moderate voters should first address the question: which undecided, independent, moderate voters?
Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Don't Produce Responsive Government: A sober look at why our government is seemingly dysfunctional and many of the common myths and bad assumptions that people use to analyze politics.
I recommended it as an example of how to use data when discussing policy not that the OP agree to the politics of the podcast.
Politicians in general speak in platitudes, some like Yang cite data as part of their stump speech so it would be useful to look at.
Everyone gets to have their own opinion but not their own facts.
Other authors/books to check out if you want a more quantitative approach to politics:
Thanks for the recommendation. I've got a lot of "left-leaning" books (well, some of them) on my list now that all sound interesting, and Debt is definitely a high priority because people keep recommending it.
Have you read any of his other work? Bullshit Jobs sounds really interesting but a couple reviews said the original article he wrote on the topic pretty much sums the book up in a much lower word count.
A few of the books on my to-read list in case anyone sees this and is interested:
While I don't know any good general primers, there's a very nice book by Achen and Bartles about the effects of elections that's designed to be reasonably accessible to all readers. (except for some of the statistics stuff)
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240
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You could find a copy in your local library probably.
Even without a double major, you could look up the textbooks used by the poli sci classes and buy a used one, or maybe they have a borrowable one in the library.
Your college may allow people to audit classes (show up and listen, but don't get any credit/grade or necessarily do any of the work). auditing a few polisci classes would work then.
Yup. The consensus is that voters pick a winning personality and then warp their views to match. Witness the flip Trump supports did on immigration.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240
Not to be a stickler, but you could easily argue that abstaining from voting is as sensible as going vegan, since it's all about supporting the status quo of a system that's based on unscientific nonsense. I've taken quiet an interest in democracy the past few years and the more I learn about it, the dumber it seems, kinda like animal agriculture.
If you're curious about the subject I'd highly recommend both Against Elections and Against Democracy. Democracy For Realists is pretty enlightening so far as well, but I'm not done with it yet.