Is Voter Competence Good for Voters?: Information, Rationality, and Democratic Performance

Abstract

A long research tradition in behavioral political science evaluates the performance of democracy by examining voter competence. This literature got its start arguing that voters' lack of information undermines a defense of democracy rooted in electoral accountability. A more recent literature deepens the debate, with some authors claiming that voters effectively use cues to substitute for information about candidates and policies, and other authors claiming that voters are insufficiently rational to do so. We argue that, regardless of its conclusions about voter competence, this literature's single-minded focus on voter behavior is misguided. We use a sequence of formal models to show that traditional intuitions are incomplete because they ignore the effect that changes in voter behavior have on the equilibrium behavior of politicians. When this strategic interaction is taken into account, increases in voter information or voter rationality sometimes make democratic performance better and sometimes make democratic performance worse. One simply cannot assess the implications of voter characteristics for democratic performance without also studying how those characteristics affect the behavior of politicians.A nxiety about the competence of voters is a longstanding theme of behavioral political science. At its heart, this literature is a debate over a proposition aptly summarized by Lupia and McCubbins (1998):It is widely believed that there is a mismatch between the requirements of democracy and most people's ability to meet these requirements. If this mismatch is too prevalent, then effective self-governance is impossible. The democratic dilemma is that the people who are called upon to make reasoned choices may not be capable of doing so. [p. 1, emphasis in original] This multifaceted debate revolves around a series of questions about voters' ability to perform their democratic function. Are voters sufficiently well informed? 1 Is the information voters do have sufficient to allow them to behave as if they were well informed? 2 Do voters respond to the right kinds of information? 3 We argue that this debate's single-minded focus on voter behavior is misguided. Elections affect democratic performance through the interaction of politicians and voters. 4 As such, facts about voter behavior, whether "positive" or "negative," on their own, are . 4 Throughout we will equate democratic performance with voter welfare. There are, of course, important non-welfarist normative arguments for democracy. We adopt this normative approach because it is in keeping with the arguments in the behavior literature we are responding to. not informative about whether a democratic system performs well or poorly.We consider a series of models that show just how important this interaction can be. 5 In our models, increased voter information sometimes improves democratic performance and sometimes makes democratic performance worse. Likewise, some forms of voter irrationality improve democratic performance and some forms of voter irrat...

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