Benjamin Franklin agreed: “Nothing can more effectually contribute to the Cultivation and Improvement of a Country, the Wisdom, Riches, and Strength, Virtue and Piety, the Welfare and Happiness of a People, than a proper Education of youth” (Franklin 1962 : 152-153). To divide every county … that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it" (Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810, in (Jefferson 1903-04), v. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. Thomas Jefferson prescribed “two great measures,… without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. Several millennia later, American radicals agreed with the diagnosis, but proposed a different solution. Aristotle sought to avoid democracy, largely on the grounds of popular ignorance: “What are the matters over which… the general body of citizens… should properly exercise sovereignty? It… is dangerous for men of this sort to share in the highest offices, as injustice may lead them into wrongdoing, and thoughtlessness into error” (Aristotle 1946: 124). Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Yancey, 1816Įver since the idea of democracy became an aspiration rather than a fear or threat, political actors have argued that citizens must be knowledgeable for it to function well. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what
The two simplest truths I know about the distribution of political information in modern electorates are that the mean is low and the variance high. I offer a few reflections on both sets of explanations, but cannot genuinely dissolve the paradox. I also analyze plausible normative explanations for the paradox: democracy does not, or does not primarily, need cognitively sophisticated citizens and democracy offers benefits that outweigh the deficits of citizens’ lack of knowledge. I then describe plausible empirical explanations for the paradox: voters are not really that ignorant the United States is not and never has been really a democracy and institutions or electoral rules have been developed to substitute for voters’ knowledge. First, I review the historical trajectory of democratization in the United States (although the argument is not specific to that country). The paradox is both historical – why have democracies expanded the franchise to include relatively ignorant voters? – and normative – why should democracies expand the franchise to include relatively ignorant voters? Putting these three uncontroversial points together leads to the conclusion that as democracies become more democratic, their decision-making processes become of lower quality in terms of cognitive processing of issues and candidate choice. 3) Most expansions of the suffrage bring in, on average, people who are less politically informed or less broadly educated than those already eligible to vote. Most observers, and I, agree that expanding enfranchisement makes a state more democratic. 2) In most if not all democratic polities, the proportion of the population granted the suffrage has consistently expanded, and seldom contracted, over the past two centuries.
Apathetic electorate democracy 3 free#
Citizens need to know who or what they are choosing and why – hence urgent calls for expansive and publicly funded education, and rights to free speech, assembly, press, and movement. If Democracies Need Informed Voters, How Can They ThriveĮlection Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and PolicyĪBSTRACT: Three uncontroversial points sum to a paradox: 1) Almost every democratic theorist or democratic political actor sees an informed electorate as essential to good democratic practice.
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