Book Review: Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, by Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels

Published date01 April 2020
Date01 April 2020
DOI10.1177/0090591719868432
Subject MatterBook Reviews
/tmp/tmp-17Ub9BMxWMU6Gp/input Book Reviews
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Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, by
Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2016, 408 pp.
Reviewed by: J. S. Maloy, Department of Political Science, University of Louisiana at
Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, USA
DOI: 10.1177/0090591719868432
Realism in academic research is fundamentally about getting researchers out-
side their own heads. The key thing to realize is humility: others may see and
engage the world differently from how we ourselves see and engage it.
Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels’s Democracy for Realists is a
compendium of evidence from the domain of democratic elections that pro-
motes realism in this sense. Because of its breadth and ambition, it will com-
mand an audience that crosses multiple subfields in political science.
Yet empirical data alone is necessary rather than sufficient for political
realism. Also required, arguably, are exercises of imagination. Counterfactuals
and hypotheticals are crucial to realism’s ability to navigate the complexity
and opacity of human affairs. Careful study of similarities and differences in
social and political processes requires imaginative research design and, in
turn, drives the imagination toward new insights. On this latter front, Achen
and Bartels’s efforts are less conspicuous and less fruitful.
The book’s impressive and wide-ranging analysis of empirical data fea-
tures in nine body chapters, bookended by introductory and concluding chap-
ters that are primarily conceptual and polemical. There is one chapter on
congruence between voters and policies; one chapter on direct democracy in
American states; two chapters on retrospective accountability in general,
using American evidence; one chapter on economic voting in particular,
using American evidence; one chapter on economic voting around the world
during the Great Depression; and three chapters on voter psychology in the
United States, with a special focus on social identities.
Readers already familiar with these empirical literatures will find in each
chapter much that suits their narrow professional interests. More importantly,
though, the considerable effort that Achen and Bartels give to reviewing pre-
vious research in various fields could make this book an aid to intellectual
cross-fertilization. Scholars of comparative politics and political theory, for
instance, will find here vital perspectives on American voters and elections.
Achen and Bartels do not just summarize and synthesize others’ findings;
they also engage in admirably frank polemics with several research tradi-
tions. Their targets include median-voter theory (24–27), the theory that cues

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and heuristics enable uninformed voters to behave rationally (38–40),
Condorcet’s jury theorem (40–41), studies that find congruence between vot-
ers and policies over time (45–48), and studies of economic voting (158–74),
among others.
Achen’s and Bartels’s intended theoretic contribution in this book is
summed up in an early passage: “if voting behavior primarily reflects and
reinforces voters’ social loyalties, it is a mistake to suppose that elections
result in popular control over public policy” (4). The argument aims first to
demolish what they call “the folk theory of democracy” and then to introduce
a group- and identity-based theory of voting behavior to...

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