Critical Review
A Journal of Politics and Society
ISSN: 0891-3811 (Print) 1933-8007 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rcri20
Getting Real about Realism: Voters Are More
Reasonable, and Democracies More Responsive,
than Achen and Bartels Suggest
William A. Galston
To cite this article: William A. Galston (2018) Getting Real about Realism: Voters Are More
Reasonable, and Democracies More Responsive, than Achen and Bartels Suggest, Critical
Review, 30:1-2, 57-70, DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2018.1466853
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2018.1466853
Published online: 14 May 2018.
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William A. Galston
GETTING REAL ABOUT REALISM:
VOTERS ARE MORE REASONABLE, AND
DEMOCRACIES MORE RESPONSIVE, THAN ACHEN
AND BARTELS SUGGEST
ABSTRACT: Our constitutional system is more sensitive to public sentiment than
Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels suggest in Democracy for Realists. Even if
our system is not micro-responsive—maintaining fidelity to public opinion, or to
campaign promises, in every detail of public policy—it is macro-responsive: politicians grasp core public expectations and do their best to meet them. While
Achen and Bartels show that group loyalties decisively shape perceptions and expectations, people often revise these perceptions and expectations based on experience.
Because we are more than the creatures of groups and parties, democracy works better
—and is better—than the authors suggest.
Keywords: Christopher Achen; Larry Bartels; Democracy for Realists; group identity; democratic
realism; macro-responsiveness; retrospective voting; voter irrationality.
Democracy for Realists was published to a chorus of cheers. I cannot add
value to the discussion by joining this chorus. So I will note, for the
record, my admiration for the book, which is considerable, and focus
on my reservations, which are significant.
William A. Galston, wgalston@brookings.edu, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies
and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution,  Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC
, is the author, most recently, of Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy
(Yale, ) and Public Matters: Essays on Politics, Policy, and Religion (Rowman and Littlefield,
).
Critical Review (–): –
©  Critical Review Foundation
ISSN - print, - online
https://doi.org/./..

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
I should say at the outset I am not an empirical political scientist, but
rather a political theorist who somehow stumbled into six presidential
campaigns and one White House. (This ratio tells you everything you
need to know about my fatal attraction to lost causes.) As such, I
observe politics through two lenses—one theoretical and one experiential—and over the decades, I’ve developed some feel for the ways in
which candidates and elected officials both shape and react to the views
of democratic publics. It is from this distinctive vantage point that I
want to examine two major themes of Democracy for Realists: retrospective
voting and tribal behavior.
To help the reader navigate through my ruminations, let me foreshadow two principal conclusions. First, granting the force of the authors’
takedown of the “folk theory” of democracy, our constitutional system
is more sensitive to broad shifts in public attitudes than their argument
suggests. Even if our system is not micro-responsive, I believe it is
macro-responsive. An entrepreneurial political leader may sponsor programs that many voters did not demand and could not have imagined.
But if the people experience these programs as beneficial, they ratify
them by incorporating them into their baseline from which losses are
measured. And as we know, the sting of loss outweighs the pleasure of
gain. This is why a thick wall of public opinion protects Social Security
and punishes politicians who try to tamper with it.
Second, although Democracy for Realists represents a necessary antidote
to liberal individualism, the authors hyper-correct by embracing group
theory with the zeal of converts. They themselves describe this as an
“intellectual conversion experience” (xiv).
If this were a wrestling match, Achen and Bartels’s maneuver would be
called the half-Madison. They endorse Madison’s theory of faction and his
depiction of non-angelic human nature while ignoring what he also (and
in my view rightly) says about the human capacity for reasoned reflection
and civic virtue. A balanced view would give due weight to the two narratives that complete Madison’s story.
Two-Stage Retrospective Voting
Achen and Bartels dwell on a real and inescapable feature of democratic
life—the tendency of voters to reward or blame politicians for outcomes
outside their control. This causes some obvious distortions. Punishing
President Wilson for shark attacks offers the most dramatic example (ch.
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

). But even when the issue is squarely in the policy domain, the problem
of causal attribution appears much the same. President Reagan cut taxes,
and the economy boomed in the s. President Clinton raised taxes,
and the economy boomed in the s. Both were rewarded with handsome reelection victories. Should they have been?
One line of analysis leads to an affirmative answer: each of these presidents found the right response to a particular set of circumstances.
Raising taxes would not have been effective in the s; nor would
cutting them have worked in the s. So the voters were right to
reward the two presidents’ good judgment, which continued to yield
favorable results for most of their second terms.
Another line of analysis suggests the opposite: within broad limits, the
level of taxation has, at most, modest effects on the performance of the
economy, especially compared to other factors. The decision of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Paul Volcker, to bring hyperinflation
under control at the cost of a deep recession in - almost certainly
contributed more to the vigorous recovery that ensued than did President
Reagan’s tax cuts, some of which were rescinded in . As for the
s, many economic historians believe that President Clinton benefitted from two macro-trends: vigorous growth in the labor supply as
more and more baby boomers entered the workforce, and the rapid productivity gains that occurred as businesses figured out how to integrate
computers and information technology into the process of production.
Here’s the problem: we cannot know for sure which of these analyses is
closer to the truth, because we cannot run alternative histories as controlled experiments. The issue is not the ignorance, irrationality, or inattention of most voters, as Achen and Bartels assume, but rather the
inherent uncertainty of human affairs. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famously
flawed form of argument, but what is the alternative? Each of us must
make judgments based not only on evidence but also on intuition.
But these judgments reveal a pattern. In politics as in other matters,
nothing succeeds like success. If things seem to be going well, it is not
unreasonable to conclude that this is good enough. Even if the president’s
policies are not responsible for good times, at least his administration has
not gotten in the way of the forces that are producing them. So voters are
not irrational to conclude they are the beneficiaries of such circumstances,
regardless of their source.
For many (probably most) voters, this leads to a rational, reasonable
two-stage process for evaluating incumbents. In stage one, voters

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
determine whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with how things are
going for the country and for themselves. If they are broadly satisfied,
challengers have scant chances of success. They can offer some version
of the claim that “We can do better,” but they are not likely to get
much of a response, in part because most people are satisficers rather
than maximizers, but also because voting for challengers requires voters
to forego the certainties of reality and instead place their faith in promises.
The choice does not reflect differences in perceived competence between
incumbents and challengers, but rather between a known quantity and a
gamble. Promises are always at a disadvantage, unless reality is bad enough
to induce voters to take a chance on the unknown.
A similar two-stage process was on display in the  presidential election, but in this case the baseline was poor performance, which favored
the challenger. A majority of voters, including many Democrats, had concluded that Jimmy Carter, a decent and intelligent man, did not have what
it took to be an effective president. Carter’s job approval numbers had
fallen into the mid-s by the fall of . Still, the slice of the electorate
whose choice was not determined by partisanship wondered whether it
was safe to entrust the presidency to Ronald Reagan. The single presidential debate had the effect of reassuring wavering voters that Reagan bore
little resemblance to the ignorant and dangerous man the Carter campaign
had depicted. Within  hours of the debate, a neck-and-neck race had
turned into a near-landslide for the challenger.
The Rationality of Retrospection
This casts the “selection rationale” for retrospective voting in a new light.
According to Achen and Bartels, retrospective voting “requires us to
assume that there are real differences in economic competence between
competing political teams” (). If my analysis is correct, this is not
necessarily the case. When voters reach the judgment that an incumbent’s
economic performance is unacceptably poor, as they did in  and
, they will strongly incline to vote for change, with no guarantee
that the new leader will do better. If this hope is unrequited, the fault
lies not with the voters but with the choices presented to them.
If no one could do better than the unsuccessful incumbent, then the
mechanism by which voters choose the challenger is beside the point.
Some economists believe that globalization tends inexorably toward the
equalization of wages across national boundaries, which is good news
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

for developing countries but bad news for advanced economies, whatever
their economic policies. If so, this presents a problem for all politics—not
just democracy—in advanced societies. It might be an argument against
continually throwing the incumbents out, but the reasoning that leads
voters to do this is not questionable. They may be wrong, but they are
not irrational.
As Achen and Bartels point out, retrospection is always in the service of
prediction. Voters must decide which candidate is more likely to produce
the results they want in the next term of office, and just as every stock prospectus is rightly required to state, past performance is no guarantee of
future results. But it is not irrational, or even unreasonable, for voters to
give some weight to the past as a leading indicator of the future. Contrary
to the position Achen and Bartels take, this is true, in part, because voters
are capable of judging the effort incumbents assert on their behalf. If a president is photographed playing golf during a natural disaster, many people
will conclude that he doesn’t care all that much about the affected communities and isn’t working hard enough to oversee relief efforts. This is
why administrations go to such lengths to avoid such visual evidence of
indifference and to portray presidents as on the job constantly, whether
they are in the Oval Office or on vacation.
There is another respect in which voters rationally attribute economic
outcomes to economic policies. In one of their most striking findings,
Achen and Bartels demonstrate that on average, economic growth
immediately preceding presidential elections in which incumbents are
up for reelection is significantly higher than at other points in the electoral
cycle. This does not prove that presidents can control the rate of longterm economic growth, but it strongly suggests that they can affect the
timing of growth.
Achen and Bartels posit that incumbents’ focus on pre-election economic performance is a rational response to political incentives. Voters are
myopic, Achen and Bartels claim: biased toward recent results over the
totality of leaders’ records in office. They show that economic growth
in the six months prior to an election affects electoral outcomes more
than do longer-term economic trends. And this, they contend is irrational.
If the issue is determining economic competence, then there is no reason
to give the most recent results such lopsided weight. But political history
challenges this argument. If a leader inherits a bad economic situation—as
Roosevelt, Reagan, and Obama did—most people are prepared to be
patient. They don’t expect an instant turnaround. They know that

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
conditions won’t return to normal, at least not for a while, and that they
will have to endure a level of well-being substantially below their aspirations. They want two things: a plan they can understand for making things
better, and evidence, within a reasonable period of time, that things are
starting to get better. They judge the success of a plan by its trajectory,
not by the level of well-being it produces at each step along the way.
When he became prime minister, Winston Churchill famously promised
his people nothing except “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He was true to
his word. He is regarded as one of his country’s greatest statesmen, not
because the British people experienced satisfaction along the path to
victory, but because under his leadership they attained it in the end.
Voters will accept delayed gratification if offered a reasonable path that
secures it.
In this respect, among others, the ancient analogy between politics and
medicine continues to illuminate the real world. Patients want to know
the nature of their disease and, even more, how long it will take them
to get better. While all of us would prefer an instant cure, we are
willing to settle for signs of improvement at a pace fast enough to
return us to normal health within a period short enough to be endured.
We do not evaluate a doctor’s performance by averaging our subjective
well-being as the treatment is taking its course. If the doctor’s prescribed
regimen eventuates in what we regard as a timely cure, we are satisfied,
and rightly so. Maybe another doctor could have produced faster results
with less discomfort along the way. Maybe we would have recovered if
we had eschewed treatment and let nature take its course. It’s hard to
know, and most of us don’t care all that much. If this is a reasonable
way of evaluating medical performance, then why not political
performance?
But let’s extend the analogy. A large problem with retrospective
voting, say Achen and Bartels, is that voters may have great difficulty
accurately assessing changes in their well-being. No doubt this is possible.
Consider a patient who feels fine as he goes to the doctor for his regular
checkup, only to be told that there are signs of impending blockage in a
coronary artery. If a stent is inserted, the patient may feel worse for a
while, and no better than before once he recovers from the procedure.
Nonetheless, he is better off than before, and his prospects for longevity
are enhanced. In such cases, there is a gap between subjective and objective well-being. But how common is such a gap in everyday politics? On
the one hand, the authors suggest a significant disjunction between
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

“aggregate economic perceptions” and “objective economic indicators”
(). On the other hand, that the performance of the economy just
prior to the election has a systematic effect on the electoral outcome
suggests that voters can evaluate overall economic conditions with tolerable accuracy.
Macro-Responsiveness
Let me suggest a distinction between mediated and unmediated assessments of states of affairs. Mediated assessments occur when individuals
cannot experience a dimension of politics directly and must rely on
others’ accounts. In these circumstances, individuals must decide whom
to trust, and many make unwise decisions. As conventionally measured,
the federal budget deficit is a fact, not an opinion, as is its trend over
time. The same is true for inflation, crime, and other national-level indicators. The truth is not hard to obtain. Nonetheless, as Achen and Bartels
point out, many voters choose to rely instead on misleading reports whose
partisan orientation they share.
Unmediated assessments, by contrast, rest on direct experience.
Farmers know whether crop prices are up or down, and no politician
can convince them that down is up. Workers know whether they are
getting overtime pay or pink slips. Mayors know whether main-street
businesses are thriving or closing. People know whether or not they
have access to good health care. No doubt, as Achen and Bartels
suggest, people overgeneralize from personal experience or local conditions. But this does not undermine the accuracy of the underlying
experiential judgments. The converse may also be true: accurate generalizations may mask the reality of personal and local circumstances. Even
though aggregate economic indicators rose steadily after the end of the
Great Recession, many regions and sectors did not participate in the
recovery, which was concentrated in metropolitan areas. This disjunction,
which researchers documented long after it emerged, helped drive the
results of the  presidential election.
“Politics is full of complexities and uncertainties,” the authors write,
and most voters are “busy with their lives in the best of times” ().
Voters cannot judge which policies are best, “so they content themselves
with asking at election time whether events have gone well or badly
lately.” And then, Achen and Bartels conclude, “they vote that myopic
judgment.” Immediately following this ringing declaration, the authors

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
offer an example that directly contradicts it—Winston Churchill’s defeat
in . This, they suggest, was myopic. Could voters not remember that
he had just helped to win World War II?
Surely they did remember this. But they may also have recognized that
the next prime minister would not be waging a war. The voters were
looking ahead to peace, and they reached the reasonable judgment that
a Labour government was more likely to deliver the domestic reforms
they craved after years of austerity.
Labour’s winning agenda included creating the National Health
Service as part of a cradle-to-grave welfare state and adopting Keynesian
economics to avoid a postwar slump and promote full employment.
These reforms proved popular. By the time the Conservatives returned
to power in , they had come to terms with the welfare state, much
as Dwight Eisenhower’s “modern Republicanism” made its peace with
the New Deal in . The British electorate retrospectively ratified
the agenda it had authorized at the end of the war, and both major political parties accepted this judgment. These are good examples not of
myopia but of what might be called the “macro-responsiveness” of
well-functioning democratic systems. Once innovations are retrospectively endorsed, they become part of a democracy’s common political
currency, which parties devalue at their peril.
The  British election illustrates another key form of democratic
accountability: the importance of keeping one’s promises. Elections are
transactions between candidates and the electorate. Candidates issue promissory notes, and the voters expect the winning candidate to cash in on
them. If candidates campaign one way and govern in another, they will
antagonize their supporters without placating their adversaries. George
H. W. Bush found this out the hard way. Having campaigned on his
“Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge, he acceded less than two years
later to a bipartisan budget deal that authorized tax increases. This
sequence of events led to a conservative revolt within the Republican
Party and contributed to his defeat in . The principal beneficiary of
Bush’s mistake was Bill Clinton, who promptly repeated it. Having campaigned on a promise to be a “new kind of Democrat,” more moderate on
social issues and less inclined to expand government, he began his presidency by endorsing the ability of gay Americans to serve openly in the
military, an unpopular position at the time, and by proposing a major
expansion of government’s role in guaranteeing health insurance for all
Americans. These steps, widely regarded as inconsistent with his
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

campaign, contributed to a rapid erosion of public support, a loss of
momentum for his legislative agenda, and a massive defeat for Democrats
in the  mid-term election.
These lessons help explain much of Donald Trump’s early presidency.
He ran on three distinctive promises that formed the core of the contract
with his base constituency: to crack down on illegal immigration; to get
tough with the countries that enjoy large bilateral trade surpluses with
the United States; and to pursue an America-first, interest-based foreign
policy. In office, he has pursued these objectives in the face of non-stop
controversy and heated criticism. Despite low levels of support in national
surveys, he seems to believe that breaking faith with the people who put
him in office would be politically fatal and that keeping his base together is
the foundation for his administration and his reelection prospects. He may
well be right.
Under exceptional circumstances, to be sure, elected officials can avoid
retribution for breaches of campaign promises. During the  presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt criticized Herbert Hoover for running
up an unprecedented $ billion deficit, and he promised to balance the
budget. As his first term proceeded, he became concerned about the electoral consequences of breaking this promise, leading to agitated strategy
sessions with key advisers.
Ultimately, however, FDR decided to grasp the nettle firmly.
Running for reelection in , he said that “to balance our budget in
 or  or  would have been a crime against the American
people. … When Americans suffered, we refused to pass by on the
other side. Humanity came first” (Roosevelt ). Far from punishing
this reversal, the electorate gave the president what was then the largest
landslide in American history. The most plausible interpretation, articulated in his First Inaugural Address, is that they elected him to do whatever
was necessary to fight the Depression. If fiscal orthodoxy proved incompatible with this objective, the voters were just as willing as he was to set it
aside in favor of deficit spending that eased hardship and put people back
to work.
Macro-responsiveness does not mean fidelity to public opinion, or to
campaign promises, in every detail of public policy. It does mean grasping
core public expectations and doing one’s best to meet them. If the public
approves, its retrospective endorsement integrates the leader’s accomplishments into a new default setting for public policy. Departing from this
baseline means meeting a substantial burden of proof. This is why

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
reform is difficult—and why successful reform benefits, in turn, from the
presumption in its favor.
Individuals and Tribes, Reason and the Passions
When it comes to identity politics, Achen and Bartels were ahead of the
curve. Although Democracy for Realists was published well before the 
presidential election, there are passages that read like a retrospective on
Trump’s victory. Interpreting experimental results, for example, they
say that “contemplating threats to the numerical dominance of white
Americans triggered defensive reactions among some white people,
heightening their sense of white identity and—crucially—associated
(Republican) partisan attachments and (conservative) policy views” ().
“A realist theory of democracy,” the authors declare, must be based on
a “realistic theory of political psychology” (). I could not agree more.
That identity is formed in groups and motivates political behavior is a
truth that an entire generation of American political scientists overlooked
or (put more charitably) underestimated, and Achen and Bartels have
done the field (and the country) a service by restoring it to a central position. But three observations challenge Achen and Bartels’s formulation of
the role of group identity in politics.
In the first place, as Achen and Bartels themselves point out, the salience of group identity rises when the group feels threatened, but such
feelings are not always aroused. The large number of Eastern European
immigrants to Britain after the  enlargement of the European
Union sparked a reaction that shaped the outcome of the Brexit vote.
Similarly, the unprecedented numbers of refugees from Africa and the
Middle East after  disrupted societies throughout Europe and triggered gains for nativist populist parties across the West. But there are
many periods when threats other than to identity—concerns about military invasion or economic decline, for example—take political center
stage. These are periods in which the nation rather than the tribe is the
relevant reference-group, when “we’re all in this together” is taken as
descriptive rather than hortatory. In U.S. history, the years framed by
the Great Depression and World War II were of this sort and shaped
American society and politics for a full generation after the war. There
are even moments when a massive catastrophe temporarily widens the
circle of our sympathy to include distant strangers in foreign nations.
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

Second, in many countries appeals to commonality enshrined in a
nation’s constitution and culture counteract the power of tribal differences. This is especially true in the United States, which stands or falls
with the practical force of e pluribus unum. When Lincoln described
America as a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal, he meant that this proposition stood at the heart of what
could make us one nation despite all our cleavages, whether crosscutting or reinforcing. The creation of France as a nation-state depended
on fostering other commonalities—a single language, a shared history, and
fidelity to republican principles. When Benedict Anderson ()
famously wrote of nations as “imagined communities,” he had in mind
the power of focal images and ideas that transcended the realities directly
experienced by family, tribe, and village. At times, leaders can use these
images and ideas to rally citizens around goals that pure tribalism fails to
encompass.
Third, while tribalism offers the best explanation of political behavior
in some circumstances, it fails to do so in others. The authors persuasively
argue for the importance of Catholic identity in the election of . The
role of African Americans in  and  offers a direct parallel. On the
other hand, Hillary Clinton’s appeal to women as a group fell flat; she did
no better among them than Barack Obama did in  or . Despite
commonalities of experience that partly shape identities, shared gender
did not have the same effect on political behavior in  as did shared
Catholicism for John F. Kennedy and shared African-American identity
did for Obama—even though Hillary Clinton, like Kennedy and
Obama, would have been the first of her tribe to occupy the Oval
Office. For political purposes, not all groups are created equal. (To be
sure, a subsequent female candidate might prove more successful at
forging an effective tribal appeal to women.)
By focusing relentlessly on group identity, Achen and Bartels end up
pushing the tribalism theory too far. Granting arguendo their claim that
the migration of white Southerners from the Democratic to the Republican party reflects an attachment to “white southern identity” rather than
issue evolution (), what about the migration of Northern white
working-class voters in the opposite direction? This movement, which
occurred long before the emergence of Donald Trump, was triggered
by the epic struggles of the s over war, culture, gender, and race,
but it is not reducible to racism. The white working class, the backbone
of the New Deal coalition, favored the Vietnam War long after white

Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
elites had abandoned it. They had little sympathy for the counterculture,
which they regarded as an unwarranted attack on social decency, mostly
by overprivileged college students. They held fast to traditional gender
roles even as feminists warred against them. And unlike white elites,
they experienced full-force the effects of liberal racial policies on
schools, housing, and employment. (It is no accident that during this
period, the phrase “limousine liberals” became a popular way of characterizing elites who lived in insulated upscale communities and sent their
children to private schools.) These features of the Northern white
working class reflect concrete interests and long-held beliefs not easily
reduced to the homogenizing concept of identity. When the leadership
of the Democratic party shifted course between  and  by endorsing candidates and positions that opposed working-class interests and
contradicted working-class beliefs, the political reaction that gave
Richard Nixon a landslide reelection victory can be explained parsimoniously without recourse to identity as an independent variable.
Is Partisanship Irrational?
My proposition is not wholly incompatible with another core thesis of
Democracy for Realists: that party loyalty shapes issue outlooks, not vice
versa ().
Here’s how the rational two-step historical process can work on partisanship. Disruptive political change loosens long-held partisan loyalties
and catalyzes a shift in party identification. After more than a century of
seeing Democrats as defenders of segregation and foes of black economic
advancement, for example, African-American voters changed their minds
in response to pivotal events. John F. Kennedy intervened on behalf of the
imprisoned Martin Luther King Jr. while Richard Nixon did not. Lyndon
Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act in  and the Voting
Rights Act a year later, and he ensured the participation of African Americans in social programs from which they had long been excluded. When
they asked themselves “Which party is better for us?” the answer seemed
clear, and before the decade was out they became the cornerstone of the
Democratic base. A theory emphasizing interests rather than identity
explains this shift. Once concrete material and political interests had
induced African Americans to become Democrats, however, they were
more likely to act in accordance with Achen and Bartels’s thesis—that
is, to develop their group identity as Democrats by embracing the
Galston • Getting Real about Realism

party’s positions on other issues less resonant to their racial well-being.
It is plausible that if African Americans had stuck with the party of
Lincoln, their positions on gender roles, homosexuality, religious
liberty, and a host of other issues would be more decisively conservative
than they now are. (As it is, there are significant differences between
mostly church-going African Americans and mostly secular white Democrats.) For two generations, Republicans have tried to use these issues to
break down the solid wall of African-American opposition, and they have
always failed.
Rationality and Democracy
I close with some reflections on reason in politics.
Achen and Bartels argue that group loyalties decisively shape perceptions, even about facts. In light of recent developments, it is hard to disagree. But two questions remain. Are all citizens equally closed to
disconfirming evidence? And does openness vary with time and
circumstances?
No doubt, initial perceptions about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass
destruction reflected partisan loyalties as well as the fears the /
attacks had sparked. But after we occupied Iraq, it became clear that we
had undertaken military action on premises that were (to be charitable)
mistaken. Many erstwhile supporters of the war turned against it, in
part because the force of the evidence compelled them to change. In
hyperpartisan times such as these, reality-based judgments may emerge
too late to avert damage to the Republic. But reality deferred is not
reality denied.
If we are nothing but the creatures of groups and parties, living in hermetically sealed alternative realities, the prospects for democracy are bleak.
But we are more than this, some of the time, some of us more than others.
Madisonian realism about human nature is not the same as the cynicism
Achen and Bartels reflect and, I fear, encourage. “If men were angels,”
Madison wrote in Federalist , “no government would be necessary.”
The success of his constitutional scheme depends not on pervasive rationality, but rather on the artful counterbalance of rival interests and passions.
The strategy, he said, is to provide for the “defect [that is, the weakness] of
better motives.”
But Madison did not—could not—leave the argument there. In Federalist , he contended that “As there is a degree of depravity in
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Critical Review Vol. , Nos. –
mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust,
so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain
portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes
the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other.” I’m
sure that Madison was right about human nature, and I suspect about
republican self-government as well.
If we see Madison whole, we can see democracy whole as well. It will
never conform to the ideals so many democratic theorists regard, against
history and common sense, as realistic aspirations. But democracy works
better, is better, than Achen and Bartels acknowledge. This is why the
authors of the Federalist could begin their project by asking whether
human beings are capable of establishing good government through
“reflection and choice,” and why they could end by answering their question in the affirmative. Some individuals are more open to evidence and
argument than others, and all peoples are less driven by group loyalties at
some times than others. The confluence of elite wisdom and popular
consent is rare, but it does happen. And when it does, it is no accident.
REFERENCES
Achen, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. . Democracy for Realists: Why
Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Anderson, Benedict. . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. . Campaign address at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, October . Available at https://fdrlibrary.org/budget.