Irrational Voters

A few days ago I happened upon this article by Bryan Caplan. (I found it from Arts & Letters Daily, which has many interesting links.) A big part of Caplan's argument is that voters in the USA share mistaken views about some important issues, so the democratic process cannot help but produce bad policies. (Please do read what he says.) I offer a couple of counterpoints, having to do with (1) money politics (2) the fragmentation of political power in the USA.

Money Politics

Caplan points out that the US Supreme Court can overrule some bad policies by ruling them unconstitutional, and wonders if bad economic policies might be overruled by some like entity that would rule them uneconomic. However, due to the corruption of legislators in the USA, policies that threaten to reduce companies' profitability often are not enacted even when many voters support them. Corruption also harms the economy in many ways, but at least it has a silver lining.

Fragmentation

Caplain laments that voters have little incentive to find out which of their beliefs (about economic policy) are mistaken, because the benefit to an individual voter of voting for a sensible policy is slight: most likely the mistaken policy will be enacted anyway. But, as far as I can see, he says nothing about the cost to politicians of enacting a mistaken policy. In the USA, this cost is slight. If the results of a poor policy cannot be blamed on foreigners, the Supreme Court, or the President, then the blame can be diffused among hundreds of individual legislators who demanded various favours or amendments in exchange for their votes. By contrast, in countries with strong and cohesive political parties, the cost to a legislator of voting against his or her party's platform is considerable, and the cost to a party of pushing through a harmful policy can be high, because voters know that the party's leaders could choose what policy would be enacted, and will hold the leaders responsible for the consequences of the choice they made.

In short, the remedy for the ills of democracy is ... Parliament.