‘Democracy’ and ‘Crisis’ are words we have come to associate them in the same sentence.

In this site and elsewhere, many people have lamented over the conduct of the present administration; Its blatant disregard for anything remotely ‘democratic’ – be it in a lack of accountability in public finances, due process of parliament or a total disregard of the freedom of the press, the Rajapakse administration have both directly and indirectly communicated that such democratic nuisances are too much of an inconvenience, especially ‘when fighting terrorism’.

One can, being good citizens of what is still, at least a quasi-democracy; place the blame squarely on the President, his brothers, the hundred-something ministers and hope the blame game would lead to some sort of a balancing effect. This could well be the case. But could it be that the conduct of the Rajapakse regime is just a manifestation of a very old problem which keeps on repeating itself? Could it be that the problem is in not just the conduct of the ruler, but of democracy itself?

Sri Lanka obviously has well established institutional problems when it comes to making democracy and republican form of government ‘work’; Starting from our inadequate constitution, to the structure of our government to its present day practices. But democracies all over the world, including where these institutions are adequate – tend to fail.

Many reasons have been put forward to this apparent failure of democracy, looking for why people vote for bad representatives and bad policies. The existence of special interest groups (workers unions, large corporate interests, etc. which represents either vote banks or finances), communalism (and resulting identity politics), public ignorance, and existing biases severely hampers an ideal democratic process which assumes a rational and an informed voter when in fact, the majority of the voting public seems to be neither informed, and according to recent research – nor rational.

The idea of ‘rational ignorance’ argued by many public choice economists asserts that the public simply don’t have enough incentive to carefully analyze and evaluate the most desirable policies the governments should follow, since the single vote an individual possess cant really change the outcome in an election, the cost of casting an informed vote outweighs the benefits, so voters choose to remain ‘rationally ignorant’.

However, people like Bryan Caplan, the author of the book ‘The Myth of the Rational Voter’, beg to differ. Caplan argues that rational ignorance can’t explain why people continuously lynch towards false beliefs rather than just being agnostic about it. He argues that voters are worse than ignorant, they are simply irrational. Caplan explains:

Rational ignorance cannot explain why people gravitate toward false beliefs, rather than simply being agnostic. Neither can it explain why people who have barely scratched the surface of a subject are so confident in their judgments — and even get angry when you contradict them. Why, to return to the case of immigration, do people leap to the conclusion that immigration is disastrous, and have trouble holding a civil conversation with someone who disagrees?My view is that these are symptoms not of ignorance, but of irrationality. In politics as in religion, some beliefs are more emotionally appealing than others. For example, it feels a lot better to blame sneaky foreigners for our economic problems than it does to blame ourselves. This creates a temptation to relax normal intellectual standards and insulate cherished beliefs from criticism — in short, to be irrational.

But why are there some areas — like politics and religion — where irrationality seems especially pronounced? My answer is that irrationality, like ignorance, is sensitive to price, and false beliefs about politics and religion are cheap. If you underestimate the costs of excessive drinking, you can ruin your life. In contrast, if you underestimate the benefits of immigration, or the evidence in favor of the theory of evolution, what happens to you? In all probability, the same thing that would have happened to you if you knew the whole truth. [link]

Caplan – a professor of economics at the George Mason University – bases his thesis on a survey which compared economists and laymen’s view of the economy, which found that economists and the general public radically differ on matters pertaining to the economy.

If Caplan’s findings are true, it questions the very foundations of democracy and confirms Winston Churchill’s saying that best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter. Churchill however, also went on to that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried”.

Therein lays the fundamental question, if not democracy then what? Caplan’s recommendations seems to be a series of (quite unorthodox) institutional reforms and more interestingly, relying more on market mechanisms to ‘get what we want’ than governments.

This latter assertion by Caplan is intriguing, for rarely does your typical advocate of democracy considers the market as a necessary condition for democracy to succeed. Even Caplan seems to put the idea forward as an escape route out of democracy rather than as means of fixing it. But assuming that democracy is the lesser worse form of government, and governments are a necessary evil can the increased reliance of the become a way of making it work?

I certainly think so. If democracy is a process which brings about political freedom, the market is an instrument which brings about economic freedom. The two are separable yet intertwined. Examples like Singapore, and Hong Kong – two of the freest economies in the world – seems to prove that economic freedom can exist quite successfully without political freedom. However, the reverse is not necessarily true, there is not a single country I can think of which can claim to be a relatively successful democracy but does not have a relatively free-market.

This seems to suggest that people in general tend to favor a degree of economic freedom if they are given the choice to do so, after all at the end of the day; it’s the bread and butter issues which matter more than say, civil liberties. In an immediate sense this seems quite contradictory to Caplan’s thesis – the voters have by and large, over time chosen the better policies over the worst and therefore cannot be deemed as ‘irrational’.

Caplan however, would probably argue that it all comes down to cost. In an unfree economic setting, the costs of making wrong choices are much higher than in a much freer economic setting, such as the U.S. therefore, after a certain threshold level the voters can afford to make ‘irrational’ choices and pay very little as immediate consequences.

This in my opinion could not only explain voter irrationality (or stubborn ignorance) but also the low voter turn-out in some developed countries, in particular the United States. Governments simply matter less in these countries so much so that some people consider it irrelevant.

Ironic as it is, I think this is the better form of democracy.

993 have read this this article so far. You may also find these articles interesting:

• The Sri Lankan Voter Most of our politicians are sanctimonious, bigoted, corrupt thugs; they are parasites sucking the blood out of our society. And yet I don’t blame them. I don’t like them, but I don’t blame them. I blame our voters, most of whom if given the chance to become politicians, would turn into sanctimonious, bigoted, bribe taking, scum... The Under Dog, June 28, 2008
• Elections in the East There is much hype by the government spokesmen about how they held an election in the East for local authorities and restored democracy. Now the government is holding a Provincial Council election. They argue that however imperfect the democracy it is a step in the right direction. But how valid is this viewpoint. The basic premise... raja, March 24, 2008