Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government by Christopher H. Achen a

[Swede]

I have not read this, but just reading what others have quoted from the book it sounds like what is happening in democracies around the world.



‘folk’ version of democracy that presumes that voting is undertaken by the ‘omnipotent, sovereign citizen’. Instead, they argue that voters tend to base their decision-making on partisan loyalties, leaving the current democratic system open to exploitation by powerful, unscrupulous actors.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/01/30/book-review-democracy-for-realists-why-elections-do-not-produce-responsive-government-by-christopher-h-achen-and-larry-m-bartels/?platform=hootsuite

[zaj]

1. Remember the book/movie "Money Ball"?

... by author Michael Lewis? It's the story of how the Oakland A's used data to win with cheap players. The follow-up book, called The Undoing Project, was supposed to be about how the Houston Rockets did the same thing in the NBA.

Then Lewis discovered that the underlying psychological phenomenon was a relatively new research discipline called "behavioral economics". And his book evolved to become the story of how two researchers became the founders of this field and won the Nobel prize for it.

Behavioral Economics upends all of libertarian Economics thinking about human decision making by establishing that humans are not "rational actors".

And it effects political decision making as well as just about everything.

Sounds like this book is taking the idea of behavioral economics and applying it to democracy and voting.

Very cool.