Democracy for Realists

Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels's book Democracy for Realists argues that the romantic view of democracy—that thinking citizens make rational choices about political issues—is fundamentally misguided. Achen and Bartels base their argument on evidence from a wealth of social-scientific sources, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks. 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; for example, partisanship drives how people perceive threats to Sweden.