Do Democracies Give Voters What They Want?

Bryan Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter:

“I see neither well-functioning democracies nor democracies hijacked by special interests,” Mr. Caplan writes. “Instead, I see democracies that fall short because voters get the foolish policies they ask for.”

To which Kevin Grier responds:

First, what has been the policy trend since world war II? To my reading of history it has been increasing trade, freer and freer flows of capital, tons of private sector innovation. I don't think this just happened in a vacuum, we lowered tariffs and capital account restrictions, we subsidized R&D, allowed (after a fashion) large changes in the composition of the economy. America has almost completely remade itself in the last 50 years, hasn't it? So maybe, just maybe, (a) people in general don't ask for foolish policies or (b) our political elites have done a fantastic job giving the people what they need while pretending to give them what they want. I'd also say that from my point of view, organized interests have done more to block this liberalizing, modernizing process than have the irrational average joes of the world.

Second and more subtly, how do we know the "foolish policies" asked for by the public are really foolish? Here I refer to the economic theory of the second best, the oft ignored bete noir of reformists. Simply put, if the polity contains multiple economic distortions, there is no way to guarantee that removing or reducing one or even a subset of them will raise welfare.

Agree with Caplan or not, his book is very significant for getting a lot of discussion and debate going on within the economic community.  It is well worth reading and continues to climb the charts on Amazon.

See my previous posts on The Myth of the Rational Voter here, here, and here.