The Democratic Dilemma
Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?

This book clarifies the debate about citizen competence in democratic politics.

Arthur Lupia (Author), Mathew D. McCubbins (Author)

9780521585934, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 March 1998

300 pages, 24 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.405 kg

'Lupia and McCubbins competently and clearly shed light on the foundations of how citizens learn.' Political Studies

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.

List of tables and figures
Series editors' preface
Acknowledgements
1. Knowledge and the foundation of democracy
Part I. Theory: 2. How people learn
3. How people learn from others
4. What people learn from others
5. Delegation and democracy
Part II. Experiments: 6. Theory, predictions and the scientific method
7. Laboratory experiments on information, persuasion and choice
8. Laboratory experiments on delegation
9. A survey on the conditions for persuasion
Part III. Implications for Institutional Design: 10. The institutions of knowledge
Afterword
Appendices
References
Author index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV]