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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Christopher Achen

Democracy isn’t about elections

12 Sunday Jan 2025

Posted by Amod Lele in Greek and Roman Tradition, Politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, Christopher Achen, democracy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Larry Bartels, Matthew Yglesias, Maura Healey, United States

Matthew Yglesias has a better understanding of the details of public policy than almost anyone I know. He excels at being a technocrat. But there’s a reason technocrats and populists are at odds: populism, whether of the Bernie Sanders or the Donald Trump variety, comes out of a fundamentally democratic impulse, promoting the rule of the people against a perceived élite (even at the expense of lost expertise). And one post of Yglesias’s shows me that he’s not so good at understanding what the rule of the people actually is.

In the case of the particular topic that Yglesias was writing about, he makes a characteristically important point on the practical implications: community meetings, and other forms of providing popular input into government actions, slow down those actions and often prevent them entirely. There is indeed something wrong with “a world where the New York State Legislature can decide in 2019 that it wants congestion pricing for Manhattan and then spend three years compiling a 4,000+ page NEPA review.” Community input often leads to bad policy outcomes. Where Yglesias is wrong, though, is in saying this interferes with democracy.

Yglesias at least states his incorrect position with characteristic clarity: “is democracy about people expressing views at hearings or is it about entrusting elected leaders with the authority to make decisions on subjects of public concern? I think it’s the latter.” And that is where he’s wrong.

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The peaceful transfer of power

06 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Politics, Social Science

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Christopher Achen, COVID-19, democracy, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Larry Bartels, United States

Four years ago, I was writing about how Donald Trump’s rise had led to some hand-wringing on whether democracy is a good idea. Now that question is more urgent, because the United States is at some risk of losing it.

In the present election, Joe Biden has held the most consistent lead in the history of modern polling. So far, not once has Trump moved ahead of Biden in the polling average. (Compare 2016.) Yes, a lot can happen in two months, but this election will involve so much early voting that there is now not much time left for Trump to turn it around. So, I feel very confident in predicting that more Americans will vote for Joe Biden than for Donald Trump. That wasn’t enough for his predecessor to actually become president, of course, since, like Al Gore before her, she was caught out by the indefensible atavism that is the Electoral College: one needs to win a specific subset of states, irrespective of the number of votes one receives. Still, Biden’s lead is such, and his support among those who dislike both candidates so much stronger than Hillary Clinton’s, that I think it is quite likely that he will get more votes in the necessary swing states as well.

Even that, however, does not mean that Biden will become president on inauguration day.

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