Various commenters on my posts on political ignorance raise the issue of academics' political views (which, of course, tend to be very left-wing relatively to the general population). Ironically, liberal commenters claim that this proves that increased political knowledge won't make people more libertarian, while some conservative ones claim it proves that political knowledge doesn't actually lead to better judgment on political issues (because the supposedly highly knowledgeable academics hold what these commenters see as foolish views).
Both claims are flawed because both implicitly assume that academics are a representative sample of well-informed voters. This is simply not true. If you take the top 5% of the electorate in terms of political knowledge, or even the top 1%, academics will be only a small fraction of the total. Business executives and high-ranking military officers also probably have vastly more political knowledge than the average citizen, yet their views are on average well to the right of those of both academics and the general public (for military officers' views, see here). Academia is a profession that disproportionately attracts liberals and leftists; whether or not this is the result of discrimination against nonliberal candidates for academic jobs, it results in a highly unrepresentative sample.
If we want to know the true impact of political knowledge on political opinions, it's necessary to test that impact while controlling for other variables in a randomly selected sample of adults. Political scientist Scott Althaus has actually done this in his book Collective Preferences and Democratic Politics. He shows that, controlling for a variety of demographic and other variables, increased knowledge makes people more socially liberal and economically conservative (i.e. - more libertarian). That does not mean that high political knowledge necessarily turns you into a libertarian. Far from it. It does mean that it is likely to make you more libertarian than you would be otherwise. The pattern is not completely consistent across all public policy questions. For example, greater knowledge reduces opposition to taxation (I suspect because antitax arguments are less counterintuitive than the protax ones). But it does hold true across most issues.
Finally, low knowledge levels are just one of two major negative effects of rational political ignorance. The second is poor evaluation of the information that we do possess, what economist Bryan Caplan has called "rational irrationality." As I discuss in this article, the fact that there is little incentive to acquire political information for the purposes of becoming a "better" voter implies that most of the information people do learn is acquired for other purposes. Many of these purposes - such as entertainment value and confirmation of preexisting prejudices - are antithetical to rational, unbiased evaluation of evidence. In my article, I explain how rational irrationality may account for the fact that most citizens tend to discount information that goes against their preexisting views and only read and watch those political media that reinforce those views, while ignoring opposing positions. Such behavior is inexplicable if the goal is to get at the truth in order to be a better voter; it is perfectly rational, however, if truth-seeking is not the primary objective.
Academics, business executives, and other relatively well-informed voters know a lot more about politics than the average citizen. But they too usually have little incentive to do a good job of evaluating the facts they know. Indeed, rational irrationality in evaluating political information may be even more common among academics than average citizens (though I must stress that we don't yet have a study testing this proposition). Most academics have a lot more emotional commitment to their political views than do average citizens, and therefore may find it even more difficult to assess opposing views in an unbiased way.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Voting for All the Wrong Reasons - Why We often Choose Candidates Based on Issues they Have No Control Over:
- The Paranoid Style of Political Ignorance:
- One Last Political Ignorance Post (For Now):
- Academics' Political Views and the Impact of Political Ignorance:
- Why Concern About Political Ignorance isn't Paternalistic:
- Political Ignorance and Belief in Conspiracy Theory:
The most one can say is that academics have spent more time in classrooms and have received more diplomas than many other people. That is very different from being well-informed -- or even educated, for that matter.
Take the issue of surveillance law, and the Terrorist Surveillance Program specifically. Imagine five possible voters:
1) Voter 1 is a conspiracy theorist who thinks the government is out to get him. He is against the TSP because he thinks it's a plot by the government to target him.
2) Voter 2 is very afraid of Al Qaeda, but thinks the chances of the U.S. government violating his rights are very low. He favors the TSP.
3) Voter 3 identifies as a liberal democrat. He has no idea of the details of the TSP or whether it works, but he knows that the Bush Admin is for it, so he is against it.
4) Voter 4 is a libertarian who generally believes that the power of the state must be as limited as possible. He doesn't know the details of the TSP or whether it works, but it sounds like past programs that he has opposed on libertarian grounds, so he opposes it.
5) Voter 5 is a computer scientist who has figured out exactly how the TSP works. He has also studied the legal debate closely for two years. However, he thinks civil liberties are stupid, so he favors the TSP.
Which of these voters are ignorant? Which are well informed?
5) is well informed ("has figured out exactly how the TSP works. He has also studied the legal debate closely for two years")
3 and 4) are not ("He has no idea of the details of the TSP or whether it works" / "He doesn't know the details of the TSP or whether it works")
As regards 1) and 2): impossible to say, at least on the basis of your description alone.
@Mr. Liberal: Yes, that's pretty much what Burke said. (Vote for people, not issues.)
The point being, academics aren't necessarily experts on anything outside of their field of study. I doubt the people who gather at a faculty meeting (excluding poli-sci and econ departments) are, on average, more politically informed than the people you find at the local bar.
Can you define what you mean by political ignorance? Politically informed? Specifics would be helpful, not just something like, "knows enough to make an intelligent and informed decision on a ballot measure."
In some ways, your ideas seem similar to those of Thomas Frank in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He didn't agree with their evaluation criteria, so he saw a problem.
your examples themselves clearly identify the voters who know the details of TSP vs those who don't. IE those who are informed and those who aren't
what your examples show is that one can be well informed yet irrational anyway. but thats a separate point no?
The military medical system is not a high point of the US Military and is generally quite disliked. The issue isn't the socialistic aspect, its the general incompetence of the more senior docs. The socialized medicine of the military isn't much different than that of a large corporation, anyway, at this point. See: TRICARE.
As far as veteran's benefits - are you a veteran? I am, and have never used any benefits at all. The only one used by most vets is the GI Bill (which requires a pay-in) - other benefits like mortgages have become functionally obsolete, and when leaving the military, I was told to stay away from the VA health system if I had any good sense at all.
On most major issues, career military folks (as opposed to non-career, which is very different) are quite conservative - I was considered quite the liberal for supporting gay rights, drug legalization, etc - and I'm just a right of center libertarian. I once had to threaten a couple of fellow junior officers for making rather incendiary and threatening comments about then-president clinton - and I was called a jerk for doing so by others. Do not be fooled - the career military is quite conservative
In your example, voter 5 is well informed on the TSP program and the legal debate. He may or may not be well informed about democratic theory and the value of civil liberties. Now, if he has read Mill &Co. and still thinks civil liberties are stupid, that is of course his perogative. But the fact that the wealth of knowledge required to be truly "well informed" as a citizen is impossibly enormous is a substantive point against Ilya's views (which is my problem with them); not a definitional one.
"Well informed" regarding TSP is not difficult to define. It is someone who has a reasonable level of knowledge regarding computer and communication technicalities, national security and military theory, counterterrorism and counterespionage tactics, philosophy, law, and international relations. The fact that the number of actual voters who meet this knowledge threshold can be counted on someone's hand (and that increasing this number will be prohibitively expensive) is, again, a substantive problem with Ilya's position, not a definitional one.
They might be more ignorant if their only reason for acquiring knowledge were to become "better" voters. But part of my point is that many of them in fact acquire knowledge for other reasons (such as entertainment value or confirmation of their prejudices).
This is known as the "opinion leader" information shortcut, and I discuss it in several of my articles. To briefly, summarize, there are several problems with it:
1. Identifying experts itself requires knowledge, often more than voters have.
2. Many political issues are not conflicts over "values" but over how to achieve agreed upon goals.
3. Before you even begin to look for experts, you need to know about the existence of the relevant issue and alternative solutions for it. Many voters don't even know that.
There is a large literature on this (going back to Plato). I have contributed my mite in several articles. In my view, an informed voter at least knows about the basic structure of the political system, the key differences between the parties, and the meaning and consequences of opposing political ideologies. The majority of citizens don't even know that much, as decades of survey research show.
To be well-informed about a particular issue might require a lot more knowledge than that, depending on the issue and how complicated it is. At the very least, you should know what the status quo and what the main alternatives to that SQ are. Again, even for many major issues, the majority of citizens don't know that.
I discuss this issue in great detail in several articles. See this paper for a relatively nontechnical version.
I don't mean to be pesky, but why? These are bread and butter issues for law professors, as we are concerned with the basic structure of the legal system, the role of ideology in lawmaking, etc. But before I went to law school it wouldn't have occurred to me that these are the things that make a voter informed.
Let us gently ignore the Socialists.