The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?Voters cannot answer simple survey questions about politics. Legislators cannot recall the details of legislation. Jurors cannot comprehend legal arguments. Observations such as these are plentiful and several generations of pundits and scholars have used these observations to claim that voters, legislators, and jurors are incompetent. Are these claims correct? Do voters, jurors, and legislators who lack political information make bad decisions? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins explain how citizens make decisions about complex issues. Combining insights from economics, political science, and the cognitive sciences, they seek to develop theories and experiments about learning and choice. They use these tools to identify the requirements for reasoned choice - the choice that a citizen would make if she possessed a certain (perhaps, greater) level of knowledge. The results clarify debates about voter, juror, and legislator competence and also reveal how the design of political institutions affects citizens' abilities to govern themselves effectively. |
Contents
Knowledge and the Foundation of Democracy | 1 |
Democracy Delegation and Reasoned Choice | 3 |
A Preview of Our Theory | 4 |
Plan of the Book | 13 |
Theory | 15 |
How People Learn | 17 |
Attention This is How We Learn | 21 |
The Cognitive Stock Market | 30 |
Experimental Design | 104 |
Experiments on Persuasion and Reasoned Choice | 112 |
Conclusion | 144 |
Laboratory Experiments on Delegation | 149 |
Experimental Design | 150 |
Experiment on Delegation | 158 |
Conclusion | 182 |
A Survey Experiment on the Conditions for Persuasion | 184 |
Attention and Connections | 35 |
Conclusion | 36 |
How People Learn from Others | 39 |
The Aristotelian Theories of Persuasion | 40 |
Our Theory of Persuasion | 43 |
Dynamic Implications | 59 |
Persuasive Implications | 62 |
Conclusion | 64 |
What People Learn from Others | 68 |
The Conditions for Enlightenment | 69 |
The Conditions for Deception | 70 |
How We Choose Whom to Believe | 74 |
Conclusion | 76 |
Delegation and Democracy | 79 |
The Dilemma of Delegation | 80 |
A Theory of Delegation with Communication | 82 |
What it All Means | 89 |
Conclusion | 92 |
Experiments | 95 |
Theory Predictions and the Scientific Method | 97 |
Laboratory Experiments on Information Persuasion and Choice | 101 |
Description of the Experiment | 186 |
Analysis | 191 |
Conclusion | 201 |
Implications for Institutional Design | 203 |
The Institutions of Knowledge | 205 |
Electoral Institutions | 206 |
Legislative Institutions | 210 |
Bureaucratic Institutions | 215 |
Legal Institutions | 223 |
Unenlightening Democratic Institutions | 225 |
Conclusions | 227 |
Afterword | 229 |
Appendices | 231 |
Appendix to Chapter 2 | 233 |
Appendix to Chapter 3 | 240 |
Appendix to Chapter 5 | 257 |
References | 261 |
277 | |
281 | |
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The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? Arthur Lupia,Mathew D. McCubbins No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
actions agent's proposal analogies basic model better Chapter cheap talk cognitive cognitive science coin landed coin-toss outcome common interests conditions for enlightenment conditions for persuasion conflicting interests Connectionism control condition correct prediction costly effort costs cues deception decisions democracy effect example expected utility expected value experimental external forces Figure ideal point incentive condition information set institutions legislators limited information matched the speaker's Matches Probability McCubbins Nash equilibrium null hypothesis Number of Agents Number of Matches Number of Principals Number of Proposals observe the coin party payoff penalties for lying perceived speaker knowledge percent Phil Donahue Political Science predictions matched Principal and Agent principal chooses principal had common principal knows principal's principals made reasoned Probability if Random respondents Rush Limbaugh satisfied sequential equilibrium signal speaker and principal speaker earned speaker knows speaker's advice speaker's statement status quo stimulus strategy profile subjects tails Theorem theory tion treatment condition voters worse