Policy Analysis - When Ignorance Isn't Bliss, How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy

Policy Analysis - When Ignorance Isn't Bliss, How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy by Ilya Somin - she covers lot of ground, humble and honest about what she doesn't cover,excellent paper:
Democracy demands an informed electorate. Voters who lack adequate knowledge about poli- tics will find it difficult to control public policy. Inadequate voter knowledge prevents govern- ment from reflecting the will of the people in any meaningful way. Such ignorance also raises doubts about democracy as a means of serving the interests of a majority. Voters who lack suffi- cient knowledge may be manipulated by elites. They may also demand policies that contravene their own interests. The American electorate does not have ade- quate knowledge for voters to control public pol- icy. Scholars have long documented the limits of voter knowledge about the institutions and poli- cies of the government. That ignorance is not a moral failing. The rational voter has little incen- tive to gain more knowledge about politics because his or her vote is unlikely to affect the outcome. Since gaining more knowledge offers few benefits and substantial costs, the average citizen remains ignorant, though rationally so. Some scholars have argued that citizens use “shortcuts” to gain enough knowledge to partic- ipate in self-government. The evidence does not support the “shortcut” argument.

• How Ignorant Are Voters?
• Recent Evidence of Political Ignorance
• The Shortcomings of Shortcuts
• The Rationality of Ignorance
• Voter Ignorance and the Size and Scope of Government
• Political Ignorance and Decentralized Federalism: The Informational Benefits of Voting with Your Feet

A possible response to the argument of this paper is simply to scale down the ambi- tions of democracy from effective voter con trol of public policy to a mere ability of voters to change rulers when they so choose. That is indeed an important advantage of democracy in situations in which incumbent officials have committed a massive and highly visible policy error. But while this claim is a point in favor of unrestricted majoritarian- ism as opposed to dictatorship or oligarchy, it says nothing about the merits of such a sys- tem compared with a democratic govern- ment with strictly limited powers. Moreover, the ability to remove a failed leader is of little use in that vast majority of cases in which the electorate cannot readily tell whether or not a given leader has failed.