Re: "whether democracy had any hope of leading to good public policy, given the level of ignorance of the voting public. [... .] In the private sector, a firm’s failed initiatives lead to financial losses [... .]. There is no comparable check on government."
In a decentralized polity (e.g., a federation of states) *exit*, i.e., internal migration might be a check on government. The U.S. had robust exit options when there was (a) the frontier and (b) small government in DC. The end of the frontier and the growth in scope and power of the central (Federal) government in DC went hand in hand.
Exit usually beats voice. Democracy has a better shot at good government if exit options for citizens are robust.
The decline of exit is perversely reinforced when big government allocates welfare in ways that tend to keep people in place.
When there was a US frontier the flow of people in and out of established states was great and the reach of governments seems rather small. I'm not sure that time period can be used to validate your hypothesis. What other examples do you have?
Leaders, followers, and casuals seems an excellent general view. It’s good to note that most Rep leaders are also college educated. My guess is that a huge number of Rep voters are casuals who are personality followers, especially of Trump. VP Vance vs DeSantis is already on many folks’ radar, but Vivek Ramaswamy ran in the primary against Trump and might well be very very popular if he’s actually successful at cutting govt, which would surprise so many.
The Democrats seem more like followers, ready to gullibly support a semi-senile Biden, or a word salad Harris, or terrible socialist Sanders. Tho perhaps it’s more anti- Trump, or anti-Republican feeling that motivates so many Dems. Why doesn’t Arnold name any Democrats? Because for most Dem voters the Dem person, or policy, matters less than the (D) Dem label.
I expect to increase writing about the Democrat Demonization Strategy, as so much Dem energy is pushed against Trump and Republicans. It seems similar to the Nazi demonization of the Jews. With lots of dishonest reports and unproven accusations.
Arnold wrote: "Intellectuals are gifted at rationalizing the irrational." Intellectuals (and politicians) are also gifted in rationalizing as being for the common good that which serves their particular interest which may differ considerably from what would in fact serve the common good.
I think they know when they are being self-serving and when they are TRYING to work for the common good. Maybe they even know what they are trying might not work but that is where they are most likely to rationalize why it will definitely work.
Oh, yes. Rationalizing rarely takes the form, "I know this does not serve the public good, so what can I come up with to fool people that it does." It is almost always, feeling that some self-serving thing does indeed serve the public good, and coming up with reasons, often unconsciously, why it does.
"(Casuals) have little knowledge of policy or government structure. Their allegiance is fickle—they are “swing voters.” I'm thinking the model of leaders, followers, and casuals gives too little shrift to the casuals. Perhaps the casuals aren't as much fickle, disinterested voters as they are efficient, principled voters who are guardians of enduring principles that stand the test of time. Perhaps casuals are the "median voters" that propel the median-voter hypothesis.
I was thinking something along similar lines—the need for a fourth category that describes those that aren’t leaders or followers but are more aware or engaged than the casuals as presented.
Perhaps there is a big number of of casuals who think the parties don’t matter much, most politicians are grifters to some extent, but the currently elected executives are doing so bad, they should be voted out. They’re not getting direct govt cash, and don’t want politics to be important to them or their lives. So mostly act like it isn’t.
The single largest group are the non-voters, but since they don’t vote with votes, we only see their moving in & out of states & cities, & what they buy & where they work. They get the shortest shrift in most discussions of political groups, but deservedly so.
“I am trying to get away from looking at political conflict as elites against populists. I think of it as elites against elites.” Yes, this is right. (See of course North-Wallis-Weingast.)
And, in a democracy (the rule of law and a broad franchise), “The Leaders are competing to attract Followers and Casuals.”
"Technocrats make unreasonable bets on regulations and government projects, which end up failing to live up to their promise while causing unintended harms. Worst of all, even badly-performing policies are difficult to discard. They develop constituencies that benefit from the continuation of misguided efforts."
While I entirely agree with the quote, I'm not sure I agree with what has followed in the past, which was essentially a call to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I have an alternate hypothesis. I propose that while most of what government does is rather inefficient or downright harmful, the end result is beneficial. The analogy can be modified a bit to explain better. The baby (benefits of government) need to stay in the tub. The best we can do with the bad is spoon out a bit of the bathwater. Trying to do more will harm the baby more than what's gained.
I'm struck by the observation that while 60 years voters could be reached through their affiliations (e.g., unions), but today, with the decline of those institutions, they are reached directly via social media. I wonder if the direct appeal is a good or a bad development.
While Friedman is undoubtedly correct that “in mass democracies, the blinkered are leading the blind,” just as the blinkered are leading the blind in monarchies, oligarchies, technocracies, aristocracies and whatever other system that you care to name, might the utopian goal of “good policy” be considered as both an outcome and a process? Must we understand Friedman as advocating a strain of perfectionism imbued with an objective sense of the good? Or, can we tolerate a pluralist world of trade-offs in which certain states of affairs may or may not be good in themselves but instead are more pragmatic accommodation between the infinite desires of people and that to which they are willing to submit?
And, yes, there are many ways to classify varying degrees of blinkered-ness and blindness, but isn’t it the process of politics that matters in getting all the different classifications to find commonalities and progress?
How different really is Friedman’s assertion from Madison’s queries regarding these eternal problems: “In a just & a free, Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in a case of universal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to holders of property?”
The symposium is behind a paywall so I have no idea what Friedman might possibly have meant by “mass democracy” but it seems to me that “republicanism” might more aptly describe in general the more common type of evolving political process by which varied human interests find ways to accommodate each other and adapt to changing circumstances.
Republicanism is, of course, like “democracy,” used in many different and frequently conflicting ways. I would suggest that the Stanford Online Dictionary of Philosophy entry on Republicanism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/ )
provides a useful starting point in considering the conundrum of the blinkered and the blind. To cut to the chase, the entry suggests that modern republicanism proposes to tolerate the reality of a blinkered/blind human condition conundrum procedurally:
“The standard republican remedy for this problem is enhanced democracy. It must, however, be democracy of the right sort. Most contemporary civic republicans reject the populist model of democracy according to which all public laws and policies must express the collective will of the people in order to be considered legitimate. Instead, they generally endorse some form of “qualified populism” (Richardson 2002) or “contestatory democracy” (Pettit 1997, 1999, 2001; Maynor 2003). Roughly speaking, the idea is that properly-designed democratic institutions should give citizens the effective opportunity to contest the decisions of their representatives. This possibility of contestation will make government agents wielding discretionary authority answerable to a public understanding of the goals or ends they are meant to serve and the means they are permitted to employ. In this way, discretionary power can be subject to popular control in the sense required for a secure enjoyment of republican liberty (Pettit 2012, 2014; Ingham 2019).
Next, of course, we will want to know how popular control might actually be put into practice. The main challenges are commonly addressed under three headings, outlined by Pettit (1997, 186–7). The first and most thoroughly discussed is the requirement that discretionary authority be guided by the norm of deliberative public reasoning. This means that the relevant decision-makers (legislatures, courts, bureaucrats, etc.) must be required to present reasons for their decisions, and those reasons must be subject to open public debate (see Sunstein 1988, 1993; Pettit 1997; Richardson 2002). So, for example, legislative processes should be designed so as to discourage back-room bargaining on the basis of sectional interests, and instead to encourage open public deliberation. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies should not be allowed to merely issue determinations on the basis of technocratic expertise without offering reasons for their decisions that are open to public examination.
The other two requirements have not received as much attention as the first, perhaps because both are relatively obvious. The second is that of inclusiveness. Opportunities for democratic contestation must be equally open to all persons and groups in the society. This requirement follows naturally from a universalized concern for republican liberty, and it has implications for the design of representative institutions, campaign financing, and so on (Pettit 1997, 2012; Bellamy 2007). And the third requirement is that there exist institutionalized forums for contestation—impartial ‘courts of appeal,’ so to speak, where citizens can raise objections to public laws and policies (Pettit 1997, 1999, 2012). Whether these forums should include constitutional courts with strong powers of judicial review remains a subject of debate in the republican literature, however.”
Although I have read just a few of his books, I would suggest that Petit offers a powerful and convincing humble alternative to the neo-oligarchists and oligarchy-apologists whose utopian visions appear to have seized the imaginations of those within academia and the supranational entities in an all consuming mania.
The modern republicans strike me as willing to eschew a perfectionist agenda in favor of fully resignation to a slow but continuous struggle of adaptation, evolution, and reform in response to changing circumstances and few if any of those of whom I have read I sense would disagree with the proposal that much work needs to be undertaken to better understand and shape the means by which processes might operate politically in ways generally accepted as desirable.
Having recently taken up the excellent symposium found in Republicanism: A Theoretical and Historical Perspective edited by Fabrizio Ricciardelli and Marcello Fantoni (https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/4643522 ), I would note that it closes on a muddled note, “"It would certainly be nice if, as in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s time, we could clearly depict a good and a bad government in pictures. But now everything is more complicated." This might perhaps be illustrated by comparing the current circumstances with Trump elected president again and with Andrew Jackson’s two terms. Both reformers, both widely detested by the establishment, both with populist support, both faced with opportunities for major achievements, yet facing enormously different systemic and procedural and institutional constraints. Perhaps it is the differences between constraints both procedural and institutional that offer the better luminating vantage as to whether or not Trump will be able to achieve his goals for national progress in the manner that Jackson did his? True, Trump is no Jackson. Yet, it still bears asking what will this unfolding tale tell us about the health and future of the republic?
"Republican Leaders still come from the college-educated elite, but this is not the case for the Casuals and many of its Followers. I suspect that this will cause tension. If the DeSantis Presidential campaign is any indication, the ability of Republicans other than Mr. Trump to connect with the Casuals may be in doubt."
Right. Now that the Trump template has been deployed successfully, I'm not sure the GOP can ever go back.
I never would have guessed Jeffrey Friedman would die when he did. Looked young for his age, was in shape, and drank nothing but mineral water when I interacted with him amid seminars, dinners, etc.
I think it is useful to draw a distinction between individuals with college degrees versus those with college educations. There is overlap, but it's certainly not 100%. Is it 70%, 60%...30%? I think the overlap is much smaller among those leaning left. I think it is correspondingly small among undergraduate majors that tend to attract left leaning students.
Yes, this is just my opinion, based on my limited personal experience.
My point is (in part) "college-educated" is a vague category. It usually means "college degree holder". And that doesn't have much to do with intelligence or cognition or capability or even education. It often is just a measure of what socio-economic class someone was born into.
Reductionistic nonsense. This reads like something on the back of a box of cereal. There are no “moderates”. And the term “college educated” is meaningless when the credentialed graduates are ignorant of history and have no grasp of logic.
As pointed out in another comment, college educated could be interpreted as differing from college degreed.
Maybe moderates is the wrong word but it works well enough for me. I am well aware of both liberals and conservatives who don't think much of many/most of the more extreme views within their group.
Note: one could argue someone like AK is not a moderate for holding other extreme views but one must remember not everyone is AK. ;-)
It’s true that there are no moderates. To believe that there are moderates is to admit to unthinkingly following a hackneyed formula that no longer has any application to contemporary politics. Our entire society is saturated leftism, taken over by The Empire of Good - and has been for decades. There are no moderates, no “right wing”, no political spectrum. There is only the totalitarian left - and those who oppose it.
Re: "whether democracy had any hope of leading to good public policy, given the level of ignorance of the voting public. [... .] In the private sector, a firm’s failed initiatives lead to financial losses [... .]. There is no comparable check on government."
In a decentralized polity (e.g., a federation of states) *exit*, i.e., internal migration might be a check on government. The U.S. had robust exit options when there was (a) the frontier and (b) small government in DC. The end of the frontier and the growth in scope and power of the central (Federal) government in DC went hand in hand.
Exit usually beats voice. Democracy has a better shot at good government if exit options for citizens are robust.
The decline of exit is perversely reinforced when big government allocates welfare in ways that tend to keep people in place.
What you say sounds reasonable, but is it?
When there was a US frontier the flow of people in and out of established states was great and the reach of governments seems rather small. I'm not sure that time period can be used to validate your hypothesis. What other examples do you have?
Leaders, followers, and casuals seems an excellent general view. It’s good to note that most Rep leaders are also college educated. My guess is that a huge number of Rep voters are casuals who are personality followers, especially of Trump. VP Vance vs DeSantis is already on many folks’ radar, but Vivek Ramaswamy ran in the primary against Trump and might well be very very popular if he’s actually successful at cutting govt, which would surprise so many.
The Democrats seem more like followers, ready to gullibly support a semi-senile Biden, or a word salad Harris, or terrible socialist Sanders. Tho perhaps it’s more anti- Trump, or anti-Republican feeling that motivates so many Dems. Why doesn’t Arnold name any Democrats? Because for most Dem voters the Dem person, or policy, matters less than the (D) Dem label.
I expect to increase writing about the Democrat Demonization Strategy, as so much Dem energy is pushed against Trump and Republicans. It seems similar to the Nazi demonization of the Jews. With lots of dishonest reports and unproven accusations.
Arnold wrote: "Intellectuals are gifted at rationalizing the irrational." Intellectuals (and politicians) are also gifted in rationalizing as being for the common good that which serves their particular interest which may differ considerably from what would in fact serve the common good.
I think they know when they are being self-serving and when they are TRYING to work for the common good. Maybe they even know what they are trying might not work but that is where they are most likely to rationalize why it will definitely work.
Oh, yes. Rationalizing rarely takes the form, "I know this does not serve the public good, so what can I come up with to fool people that it does." It is almost always, feeling that some self-serving thing does indeed serve the public good, and coming up with reasons, often unconsciously, why it does.
"(Casuals) have little knowledge of policy or government structure. Their allegiance is fickle—they are “swing voters.” I'm thinking the model of leaders, followers, and casuals gives too little shrift to the casuals. Perhaps the casuals aren't as much fickle, disinterested voters as they are efficient, principled voters who are guardians of enduring principles that stand the test of time. Perhaps casuals are the "median voters" that propel the median-voter hypothesis.
I was thinking something along similar lines—the need for a fourth category that describes those that aren’t leaders or followers but are more aware or engaged than the casuals as presented.
I think you both are talking about a really tiny fraction of the population.
That said, I can think of three sources of such people.
Read Three Languages
Read Righteous Mind
Read I Never Thought of It That Way or participates in Braver Angels
Perhaps there is a big number of of casuals who think the parties don’t matter much, most politicians are grifters to some extent, but the currently elected executives are doing so bad, they should be voted out. They’re not getting direct govt cash, and don’t want politics to be important to them or their lives. So mostly act like it isn’t.
The single largest group are the non-voters, but since they don’t vote with votes, we only see their moving in & out of states & cities, & what they buy & where they work. They get the shortest shrift in most discussions of political groups, but deservedly so.
“I am trying to get away from looking at political conflict as elites against populists. I think of it as elites against elites.” Yes, this is right. (See of course North-Wallis-Weingast.)
And, in a democracy (the rule of law and a broad franchise), “The Leaders are competing to attract Followers and Casuals.”
A simple but illuminating model.
"Technocrats make unreasonable bets on regulations and government projects, which end up failing to live up to their promise while causing unintended harms. Worst of all, even badly-performing policies are difficult to discard. They develop constituencies that benefit from the continuation of misguided efforts."
While I entirely agree with the quote, I'm not sure I agree with what has followed in the past, which was essentially a call to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I have an alternate hypothesis. I propose that while most of what government does is rather inefficient or downright harmful, the end result is beneficial. The analogy can be modified a bit to explain better. The baby (benefits of government) need to stay in the tub. The best we can do with the bad is spoon out a bit of the bathwater. Trying to do more will harm the baby more than what's gained.
"Intellectuals are gifted at rationalizing the irrational."
Another pithy Klingism.
I'm struck by the observation that while 60 years voters could be reached through their affiliations (e.g., unions), but today, with the decline of those institutions, they are reached directly via social media. I wonder if the direct appeal is a good or a bad development.
Good. Any system that allows people to be more informed is good, whether or not they use that information wisely (like I would 😂).
You’ll be talking about the circulation of the elites next.
While Friedman is undoubtedly correct that “in mass democracies, the blinkered are leading the blind,” just as the blinkered are leading the blind in monarchies, oligarchies, technocracies, aristocracies and whatever other system that you care to name, might the utopian goal of “good policy” be considered as both an outcome and a process? Must we understand Friedman as advocating a strain of perfectionism imbued with an objective sense of the good? Or, can we tolerate a pluralist world of trade-offs in which certain states of affairs may or may not be good in themselves but instead are more pragmatic accommodation between the infinite desires of people and that to which they are willing to submit?
And, yes, there are many ways to classify varying degrees of blinkered-ness and blindness, but isn’t it the process of politics that matters in getting all the different classifications to find commonalities and progress?
How different really is Friedman’s assertion from Madison’s queries regarding these eternal problems: “In a just & a free, Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in a case of universal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to holders of property?”
The symposium is behind a paywall so I have no idea what Friedman might possibly have meant by “mass democracy” but it seems to me that “republicanism” might more aptly describe in general the more common type of evolving political process by which varied human interests find ways to accommodate each other and adapt to changing circumstances.
Republicanism is, of course, like “democracy,” used in many different and frequently conflicting ways. I would suggest that the Stanford Online Dictionary of Philosophy entry on Republicanism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/ )
provides a useful starting point in considering the conundrum of the blinkered and the blind. To cut to the chase, the entry suggests that modern republicanism proposes to tolerate the reality of a blinkered/blind human condition conundrum procedurally:
“The standard republican remedy for this problem is enhanced democracy. It must, however, be democracy of the right sort. Most contemporary civic republicans reject the populist model of democracy according to which all public laws and policies must express the collective will of the people in order to be considered legitimate. Instead, they generally endorse some form of “qualified populism” (Richardson 2002) or “contestatory democracy” (Pettit 1997, 1999, 2001; Maynor 2003). Roughly speaking, the idea is that properly-designed democratic institutions should give citizens the effective opportunity to contest the decisions of their representatives. This possibility of contestation will make government agents wielding discretionary authority answerable to a public understanding of the goals or ends they are meant to serve and the means they are permitted to employ. In this way, discretionary power can be subject to popular control in the sense required for a secure enjoyment of republican liberty (Pettit 2012, 2014; Ingham 2019).
Next, of course, we will want to know how popular control might actually be put into practice. The main challenges are commonly addressed under three headings, outlined by Pettit (1997, 186–7). The first and most thoroughly discussed is the requirement that discretionary authority be guided by the norm of deliberative public reasoning. This means that the relevant decision-makers (legislatures, courts, bureaucrats, etc.) must be required to present reasons for their decisions, and those reasons must be subject to open public debate (see Sunstein 1988, 1993; Pettit 1997; Richardson 2002). So, for example, legislative processes should be designed so as to discourage back-room bargaining on the basis of sectional interests, and instead to encourage open public deliberation. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies should not be allowed to merely issue determinations on the basis of technocratic expertise without offering reasons for their decisions that are open to public examination.
The other two requirements have not received as much attention as the first, perhaps because both are relatively obvious. The second is that of inclusiveness. Opportunities for democratic contestation must be equally open to all persons and groups in the society. This requirement follows naturally from a universalized concern for republican liberty, and it has implications for the design of representative institutions, campaign financing, and so on (Pettit 1997, 2012; Bellamy 2007). And the third requirement is that there exist institutionalized forums for contestation—impartial ‘courts of appeal,’ so to speak, where citizens can raise objections to public laws and policies (Pettit 1997, 1999, 2012). Whether these forums should include constitutional courts with strong powers of judicial review remains a subject of debate in the republican literature, however.”
Although I have read just a few of his books, I would suggest that Petit offers a powerful and convincing humble alternative to the neo-oligarchists and oligarchy-apologists whose utopian visions appear to have seized the imaginations of those within academia and the supranational entities in an all consuming mania.
The modern republicans strike me as willing to eschew a perfectionist agenda in favor of fully resignation to a slow but continuous struggle of adaptation, evolution, and reform in response to changing circumstances and few if any of those of whom I have read I sense would disagree with the proposal that much work needs to be undertaken to better understand and shape the means by which processes might operate politically in ways generally accepted as desirable.
Having recently taken up the excellent symposium found in Republicanism: A Theoretical and Historical Perspective edited by Fabrizio Ricciardelli and Marcello Fantoni (https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/4643522 ), I would note that it closes on a muddled note, “"It would certainly be nice if, as in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s time, we could clearly depict a good and a bad government in pictures. But now everything is more complicated." This might perhaps be illustrated by comparing the current circumstances with Trump elected president again and with Andrew Jackson’s two terms. Both reformers, both widely detested by the establishment, both with populist support, both faced with opportunities for major achievements, yet facing enormously different systemic and procedural and institutional constraints. Perhaps it is the differences between constraints both procedural and institutional that offer the better luminating vantage as to whether or not Trump will be able to achieve his goals for national progress in the manner that Jackson did his? True, Trump is no Jackson. Yet, it still bears asking what will this unfolding tale tell us about the health and future of the republic?
Oh, twaddle.
"The first and most thoroughly discussed is the requirement that discretionary authority be guided by the norm of deliberative public reasoning."
The sentences following make it clear that this means there must be a very large place for people who are good with words. Yeah, that's democratic.
"The second is that of inclusiveness. Opportunities for democratic contestation must be equally open to all persons and groups in the society."
That has never happened and never will because it is impossible.
This is not realistically thinking about how "how popular control might actually be put into practice." It is damn close to a "perfectionist agenda".
"Republican Leaders still come from the college-educated elite, but this is not the case for the Casuals and many of its Followers. I suspect that this will cause tension. If the DeSantis Presidential campaign is any indication, the ability of Republicans other than Mr. Trump to connect with the Casuals may be in doubt."
Right. Now that the Trump template has been deployed successfully, I'm not sure the GOP can ever go back.
I never would have guessed Jeffrey Friedman would die when he did. Looked young for his age, was in shape, and drank nothing but mineral water when I interacted with him amid seminars, dinners, etc.
Apparently had a heart condition.
I think it is useful to draw a distinction between individuals with college degrees versus those with college educations. There is overlap, but it's certainly not 100%. Is it 70%, 60%...30%? I think the overlap is much smaller among those leaning left. I think it is correspondingly small among undergraduate majors that tend to attract left leaning students.
I don't know what the overlap is either. I suppose it depends on where ones places the bar for educated.
Your second point is born out by the tendency of older people to more often move right than left.
...or is that claim without evidence? IDK
Yes, this is just my opinion, based on my limited personal experience.
My point is (in part) "college-educated" is a vague category. It usually means "college degree holder". And that doesn't have much to do with intelligence or cognition or capability or even education. It often is just a measure of what socio-economic class someone was born into.
Friedman I find Trump supporters to have pretty systematic beliefs, wrong ones IMHO, but systematic enough.
Reductionistic nonsense. This reads like something on the back of a box of cereal. There are no “moderates”. And the term “college educated” is meaningless when the credentialed graduates are ignorant of history and have no grasp of logic.
As pointed out in another comment, college educated could be interpreted as differing from college degreed.
Maybe moderates is the wrong word but it works well enough for me. I am well aware of both liberals and conservatives who don't think much of many/most of the more extreme views within their group.
Note: one could argue someone like AK is not a moderate for holding other extreme views but one must remember not everyone is AK. ;-)
You’re mistaken. There is no political spectrum, only the saturated left.
Speaking of reductionist nonsense -- "There are no 'moderates'."
It’s true that there are no moderates. To believe that there are moderates is to admit to unthinkingly following a hackneyed formula that no longer has any application to contemporary politics. Our entire society is saturated leftism, taken over by The Empire of Good - and has been for decades. There are no moderates, no “right wing”, no political spectrum. There is only the totalitarian left - and those who oppose it.
Wonderful. Reminds me of your Three Languages book. Maybe it's not as profound as TL but it's just as interesting.