Christopher H. Achen

Larry M. Bartels

Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters—even those who are well informed and politically engaged—mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly. Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.

Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Democracy for Realists

W. Phillips Shively

In the last several years, new disputes have erupted over the use of group averages from census areas or voting districts to draw inferences about individual social behavior. Social scientists, policy analysts, and historians often have little choice about using this kind of data, but statistical analysis of them is fraught with pitfalls. The recent debates have led to a new menu of choices for the applied researcher. This volume explains why older methods like ecological regression so often fail, and it gives the most comprehensive treatment available of the promising new techniques for cross-level inference. Experts in statistical analysis of aggregate data, Christopher H. Achen and W. Philips Shively contend that cross-level inference makes unusually strong demands on substantive knowledge, so that no one method, such as Goodman's ecological regression, will fit all situations. Criticizing Goodman's model and some recent attempts to replace it, the authors argue for a range of alternate techniques, including estensions of cross-tabular, regression analysis, and unobservable variable estimators.

Cross-Level Inference

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments

Why our belief in government by the people is unrealistic—and what we can do about it Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters—even those who are well informed and politically engaged—mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly. Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.

Thomas König

Robert Thomson

Frans N. Stokman

European legislation affects countless aspects of daily life in modern Europe but just how does the European Union make such significant legislative decisions? How important are the formal decision-making procedures in defining decision outcomes and how important is the bargaining that takes place among the actors involved? Using a combination of detailed evidence and theoretical rigour, this volume addresses these questions and others that are central to understanding how the EU works in practice. It focuses on the practice of day-to-day decision-making in Brussels and the interactions that take place among the Member States in the Council and among the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament. A unique data set of actual Commission proposals are examined against which the authors develop, apply and test a range of explanatory models of decision-making, exemplifying how to study decision-making in other political systems using advanced theoretical tools and appropriate research design.

Christopher H. Achen

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