Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T23:06:45.796Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Discussion of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2017

Abstract

Liberal democracy is often viewed by its supporters as a system of government that responds to the informed and rational preferences of the public organized as voters. And liberal democracy is often viewed by its critics as a system that fails to respond to the informed and rational preferences of its citizens. In this book Larry Bartels and Chris Achen draw on decades of research to argue that a “realistic” conception of democracy cannot be centered on the idea of a “rational voter,” and that the ills of contemporary democracies, and especially democracy in the U.S., must be sought in the dynamics that link voters, political parties and public policy in ways that reproduce inequality. “We believe,” write the authors, “that abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”

Type
Review Symposium: Elections and Responsive Government
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cohen, Elizabeth F. 2009. Semi-citizenship in Democratic Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Persad, Govind. 2014. “Libertarian Patriarchalism: Nudges, Procedural Roadblocks, and Reproductive Choice.” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 35. Available at http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1508/.Google Scholar
Sleat, Matt. 2013. Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Tamir, Yael. 1995. Liberal Nationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thaler, Richard H. and Sunstein, Cass R.. 2003. “Liberal Paternalism.” Proceedings of the One Hundred Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Washington, DC, January 3–5. American Economic Review 93(2): 175–79.Google Scholar
Wells, Peter. 2010. “A Nudge One Way, A Nudge the Other: Libertarian Paternalism as Political Strategy.” People, Place, and Policy Online 4(3): 111–15. Available at https://extra.shu.ac.uk/ppp-online/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Nudge_one_way_libertarian_paternalism_political_strategy.pdf.Google Scholar