Discussions and Stories II
An Informal Look at Democratic Ideals and Democratic Realities
By David Armando Zelaya
I last asked for a step forward. I now ask for a step back. I ask that you step back from the minute by minute news ticker in perpetual rotation and instead exchange those minutes for days, your days for months, your months for years and your years for centuries. You’ll find that the jagged peaks and valleys on your Wall Street Journal turn to curves. The weather becomes something more serene. There is less to know and therefore less reason to worry. When Old-man Time is given leave to come and go, his volatile and chaotic whims and rants fade and blur, giving way like an old Van Gogh. It’s a trait not unnoticed and maybe even our cause for attributing wisdom to age.
In our previous discussion something was gained by this. Flawed democracy seemed less flawed with the passing of time. A dynamic view of politics pulled the curtains on our little show of democratic idealism and confirmed the value of regular elections and term limits. It was a discussion of actors, stages, and villains and as tantalizing as a story may be this time around, stories will yet again have to wait and another discussion begun.
Our general theme, lurking backstage behind a curtain of words, is ignorance. Our object of inquiry is the thorny subject of political parties. The theories invoked here will try to be interpreted in relation to the role ignorance plays in politics. In so doing, I think a clearer and more placid understanding will be developed concerning a thing that too often seems chaotic in our minute by minute world.
My methods remain unchanged. Via an informal discussion, the hope is that a greater audience will be engaged in a conversation that has, up until now, too often been whispered behind the hefty doors of universities and laboratories. I’m compelled, however, to emphasize the limits of both this form and my skills. The limits stem from the nature of the work upon which this discussion is built. The arduous labor and brilliance of the researchers and scientists cited in this short work would be insulted if I didn’t admit to their shortcomings. These theories and the research used to test them all make assumptions and admit unabashedly to a certain level of uncertainty. To use artistic terms, never do these artists work exclusively with either black or white; instead, they forever live their lives painting in shades grey. They are all too familiar with the fact that often in human history we have been made to look like fools because we were so sure of our own genius. This is a mistake I can only hope to avoid here by making a concerted effort to highlight my own ignorance.
For a more intimate view of the ideas we will discuss, I would strongly advise a reading of the references cited at the end of the article. For the most part, they can be found on library websites or via a quick search on any of the commonly used search engines.
On a final note, the broadness of my focus must be addressed. It will quickly be noticed that I make little mention of any specific parties or any of their respective histories. In fact, references to history will only be used as passing examples for a given point or idea. The reasons for this have something to do with my own interests and education but, more importantly, they derived from a clear difference between the disciplines of political science and history. I have no doubt that an in-depth study of the inner-trappings of specific political parties and their histories would provide a great wealth of knowledge and insight concerning our subject; however, our particular goal is to gain an understanding of all political parties in all types of democracies at all times given certain assumptions. Given this end, our means tend to reflect a broadness and disconnectedness that may come off as irrelevant to some. I’m confident, however, that by the end of this discussion such feelings will have been put to rest and a considerable amount of insight gained.
Act II – Dreams are Admired
The simple fact that political parties dominate the day to day discourse of today’s media outlets is reason enough to investigate their nature and question their undeniable influence. Yet, to me at least, there seems something more interesting in a certain contradiction that has for a long while both intrigued and frustrated me. Were you to direct your eyes and open your ears towards a discussion on this subject, everywhere you would see tightly gripped fists shaking in the air and hear thundering voices proclaiming an utter abhorrence for the role political parties play in government; yet, political parties not only stubbornly persist, they have come to thrive and now seem to dominate our choices and discussions concerning government. Among the many things that I suspect pass for one thing and are truly another, this particular phenomenon of political parties seems to most demand an introspective and level-headed evaluation of human nature.
A passive day-to-day analysis of political parties might lead some to cast these organizations as despotic “old-boys clubs” bent on doing the exact opposite of what they promise. At this, I can only wonder. I wonder why a group of people, that on the face of it seem no different than anyone else, would choose an occupation that apparently only excels in slander, theft, exaggeration, oversimplification, and mockery; I am compelled to wonder if perhaps we, the people, have a hand in this dirty mess we call politics; and ultimately, I wonder if maybe the weight of guilt should instead be placed on our shoulders for our own ignorance and iniquities.
All literary tiptoeing aside, I think it’s clear where I’m going with this line of thought. It is the imperfections harbored by all the individuals in society that culminate to create the grand disorder we see before us. And, let it be noted for the record that in this case there exist no human imperfection more guilty than ignorance. Ignorance lies at the heart of the dark mess political parties have come to embody. It is, therefore, towards ignorance that we must direct our gaze.
The following words will try to establish that there does indeed exist a relationship between the nature of political parties and ignorance and that instead of resisting this relationship we should seek to learn from it. The former is a cross I must bear the latter is the reader’s.
Scene I – Dramatis Personae
Definition is always a delightful way to start any discussion. Therefore, given our subject, political parties need to be defined.
When trying to define political parties it helps to abstract for a moment and forget those things that are commonly seen at face value and instead scrutinize the fundamentals. We, therefore, start with a discussion of units. The ultimate unit within a political party is the individual. We can say this because there is no functional way to partition the individual into smaller constituent parts that can act independently. Given the propensity to doubt all assumptions in our society, I’ll simply offer up the idea of attempting to further divide an individual into smaller independent units; I think you’ll find the results of such a thought experiment to be both gruesome and irrelevant.
That being said, the individual is considered to be one who is rational. Having gone into some depth in explaining the contentious subject of Rationality in my previous discussion, here I will simply rely on a definition: Rationality is defined as a condition wherein an individual has an ordered set of preferences and acts according to those preferences when making choices, always attempting to maximize utility given a scarcity of resources and a level of uncertainty, with utility being a catch-all phrase for whatever it is that person wants at a given time and situation. In other words, people do what they want according to what they like given what they have and what they know.
Being that political parties are made up of multiple rational individuals interacting with one another, something must be said about human interaction; however, before jumping head first into a subject as complicated as the clashing of human nature against human nature, the tools of analysis must first be discussed. Within the social sciences (and yes, they merit the title of being “a science” because of their rigorous use of the “scientific method”) game theory is used as a means to an end, specifically, a systematic and logically coherent understanding of how people deal with each other. Game theory can be characterized simply as the analysis of individuals behaving strategically; the term strategic meaning that rational individuals take into account not only their own preferences and resources but they also account for the believed preferences and resources of others around them (Bueno De Mesquita, 2009). In game theory, it is assumed that all players are thinking about how other players are going to either react to or preempt their actions (you’ll have to excuse my use of terms like player and game. They are, in my opinion, archaic terms that only serve to intimidate. Wherever possible I will try to avoid such terminology in the hopes of making this very real subject seem real) (Bueno De Mesquita, 2009).
Game theory is divided into two fields: cooperative and non-cooperative (McCain, 2008). If you’re interested in getting a Nobel Prize, non-cooperative game theory is your best bet. On the other hand, if you’re more inclined to an understanding of the complicated nature of coalitions, the inner machinations of organizations, and characteristics of political parties, cooperative game theory is going to be your money maker.
Cooperative game theory examines situations where people form coalitions. Coalitions are very specific things (McCain, 2008). They are groups of people that choose a common strategy in an attempt to increase the accrued benefits of all those included in the group (McCain, 2008). The emphasis here lies in the idea that the coalition only exist if its members believe they are better working together than they are working apart. Should this condition not hold, the coalition ceases to exist as its members break ranks and do what they feel is best for them (could this perhaps explain why the life span of rock bands is so fleeting? Perhaps).
Now, let me warn you, what I’m about to do is only ever attempted by either the meticulous and well read PhD level researcher or the naïve sophomoric undergraduate; I’m going to cross disciplines. In the grand field of sociology, there exists what is called a theory of organizations. In this theory, organizations are defined as “… the arrangement of personnel for facilitating the accomplishment of some agreed upon purpose through the allocation of functions and responsibilities” (Selznick, 1948). Let me emphasize that both game theory and organization theory assume rationality and have the same basic scientific foundations, they differ only in the subject matter they address and in the field of study which has laid claim to them. In organization theory, the idea that organizations have stated goals and seek to genuinely accomplish them leads to the natural creation of formal structures derived from the needs to maximize cost-saving, delegate authority, and divide labor (Selznick, 1948). Organization theory is useful in the sense that it creates distinctions between different groupings of people (i.e. organizations, markets, movements, ethnic/sectarian divisions).
According to the preceding definitions, we can then say that political parties are organizations, which are in turn types of coalitions. This little chain of equivocation is important in that it reminds us that political parties (like governments and political majorities) are not singular things with their own wills and preferences. They are coalitions of minorities whose ultimate unit is the rational individual who is only cooperating as long as his interests are being met (as stated by cooperative game theory). Furthermore, Political parties are distinct from other types of groupings, like political movements, markets, religious sects, and racial demographies, in that they have stated goals and, therefore, must maximize scarce resources, delegate authority, and create divisions of labor; thus, giving them a formal structure (as stated by organization theory). In bringing it all together we yield the following: Political Parties are organized coalitions whose specific goal is to promote its members interest in government. To be more specific, its member’s interests are “to enjoy the income, prestige, and power that go with running the governing apparatus” (Downs, 1957).
However, to get at a working definition of political parties, there remains something to be said and articulated about a thing that may very well be more reviled than our current subject. I confess that there are actually many things that are held with greater contempt by the people than political parties, namely big business, the unjust justice system, organized religion, and smug academics but given our subject we’ll have to settle for a little talk concerning degenerate lobbyist and soulless interest groups.
With the help of the definitions above, lobbyists and interest groups can easily be described. I don’t think it would be much of stretch to say that they’re organized coalitions with the stated goal of promoting their member’s interests in government. Strangely enough, that definition sounds a great deal like the other organized coalition we happen to be discussing. The astute reader might here think to themselves, “Well by gosh! There you have it old boy! Our government is nothing more than the tool of despots and crooks; Parties and Lobbyist, the whole lot of them, in cahoots for a chance at our coffers!”
Yet, remaining sticklers for details, notice must be taken of the methods used by types of organizations in the achievement of their goals. Why is this important? Semantics is a barrier towards truth, is it not? In this case, a diligent catalog of terms and a consistent use of said terms thereafter guards against the making of dangerous mistakes. For instance, if no further distinctions were made concerning politically motivated organizations, we could quite easily group together PETA, the GOP, and Hezbollah. It’s quite clear that each is an organized coalition whose stated goal is to promote its member’s interests in ongoing negotiations of their respective social contracts; yet, it’s also painfully obvious that these as desperately different types of things. It is their means of promotion that makes them unique.
The methodological difference between political parties and interest groups is simple enough. Political parties seek to influence through the attainment of political office. Interest groups seek to influence via their ability to persuade the ignorant and control information. I purposely neglect the use of bribery because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t use bribery. For now this distinction is enough to proceed, but later, once our ignorance is better understood, the true nature and power of these two institutions will seem all too clear.
Scene II – Deus Ex Machina
Up to this point, nothing has been said concerning the reality of our subject. It’ll remain that way for a good while. The following will ask and answer questions concerning the behavior of political parties given certain assumptions. Incrementally, the assumptions will be relaxed until we arrive at something that certainly sounds like reality. Let me emphasize, however, that it most certainly is not.
***
Instead of talking about something as boring as the real world, why not talk about a story. Perhaps one of my favorite tales is the story of Adam and Eve. Irrespective of ones religious beliefs, the sheer power of its ideas cannot be denied. The simple suggestion that to be a God one need only taste the fruits of knowledge is certainly tempting, enchanting, and seductive. Yet, is it not also true that in the gaining of knowledge and the power it covets there comes also a loss of innocence, a destruction of ideals and, a fall from grace? Wouldn’t the gates to paradise and bliss seem less daunting if we were unaware of the soulless forces that keep them securely shut? I think so and I therefore ask, like I suspect Adam did, what good is the power and sight of God if he rules nothing but a universe that rules itself by decree of abstractions and numbers? And even if hopes and dreams steeped in innocence prove false, is there not value in the consolation their delusions provide?
It’s sufficed to say that Ignorance has the power to comfort the soul and provide hope for the future, a tempting trait to the burdened and weary. It is also a power that comes with a cost in our world; exasperatingly, nature has also levied cost against the power bestowed unto those so bold as to seek knowledge and use it to their benefit. First, we address the former.
A century has passed since it was proposed that with the confounding advance of technology and the full force of capitalism’s productive powers unleashed, scarcity would be overcome and a paradise of plenty regained. Manifestos were written, revolutions were had, and labor was freed from its chains; yet, still we have scarcity and still we pay costs for our actions.
Scarcity is quite the persistent issue indeed and an interesting one at that. When it’s said that a thing is scarce it’s meant that there is not enough of it accommodate all those things it’s needed for. According to the principles of economics, whenever there is greater demand than there is supply costs arise for whatever thing is being demanded. Given that most things are scarce relative to the demand for them, most things cost something to whoever wants them. Considering that we all die, it can be said that time is a scarce thing and, conveniently, it is the costs of time that are the primary props at play when discussing ignorance.
On any given day in a person’s life, things need to be done. People have to pick and choose what they will do with their time and they benefit from those things they get done and pay in terms of the things that get put off. Traditionally, this is called an opportunity cost. In deciding how informed a person is going to be concerning a specific subject, they have to decide how much of their time and other resources they want to spend gathering and digesting relevant information. They ask themselves, I could spend an hour reading about (insert issue here) or I could (insert important task here).
Though this may initially seem mundane and marginal, with further examination, the true costs of information become all too apparent. For example, let’s say somebody wishes to truly understand how a rise in a country’s gross domestic product affects that country’s labor market. To gain said understanding, traditionally, an individual would need an in-depth education in macroeconomic theory. To master this particular field of study it takes upwards of seven years of formal training, thousands of dollars in tuition fees, and the opportunity cost of forgone income during that same period, followed by a life of research and frustration. The same is true of Law, Physics, Literature, and Art.
With costs that high, can you really blame a person for choosing to remain ignorant about the niceties of economics or any subject for that matter? To bring this point home, let’s think of all those people whose time is beyond precious. No, I’m not talking about those lucky few who make thousands of dollars in an hour; I’m talking about those sad legions that make maybe seven dollars in an hour. For them, the way they spend their time might decide if their child eats or if they get evicted next month. For them, they can choose, between their sanguine responsibility to their family or their contrived responsibility to good civics and class.
Yet, even with this impassioned defense of ignorance, we’re still left with the dispassionate question, how do individuals make choices among things they are ignorant of? The answer is they cheat.
Given that the costs of information are as high as they are, it certainly doesn’t help that people are generally lazy thinkers. Put in more precise language, even when informational costs are relatively cheap, – say, instead of trying to understand all of macroeconomic theory, an individual is comparing two political candidates with all the pertinent information about both candidates gathered and organized directly in front of them- still, they’ll try to maximize their resources (in this case the effort it takes to think things through) and instead of carefully considering the data they will try to find a shortcut to their answer (Ellen Riggle, 1992). In social science these mental shortcuts are called heuristics.
Heuristics are seen as simplifications of reality’s complexities. They allow individuals to make fairly accurate assessments without forcing them to go through all the nasty thinking that they seem to so despise. Heuristics can take the form of racial stereotypes, religious beliefs, product branding, scientific models, and political ideologies, among other things (Ellen Riggle, 1992; Nicholas Valentino, 2002). For our particular purposes, they play a part in the processes individuals undergo when making politically based choices, a.k.a. voting.
Strangely enough, to really get an idea of how heuristics and ignorance effects decision making, let’s imagine a world without them. Let’s imagine a world where instead of being bamboozled into damnation, Adam was made a God and received the rights and powers included therein and that we, his lowly descendents, were lucky enough to inherit his gift of knowledge unbounded and sighted never ending.
In a world of perfectly informed individuals, decisions would be simple enough. A voter would compare their candidates or possible policies based on how much each increased the voter’s well-being. The voter would know voting records, the amount of wellbeing gained by specific policies, the probabilities that policies would accomplish a given task, the costs associated with all possibilities, and would choose that choice which was best for them (Black, 1948). Let’s assume, for simplicities sake, that voters only relate their voting preferences to one issue (one dimension).
Politicians, being individuals seeking to gain and maintain political office for the fruits of prestige, wealth, and power that such offices impart, also having omnipotent insight, would seek to maximize votes and in so doing gravitate towards positions that do exactly that (Black, 1948; Downs, 1957). Eloquently enough, if there exists more than one candidate and they are seeking a majority in a single member district, that center of gravity would just so happen to be the median of the electorate (the electorate being all those individuals that vote) (Black, 1948; Downs, 1957). If a distribution of voters is divided about its median that simply means that the voters are evenly split about that point with half of the electorate on one side and the other half on the other. It is at the median that each candidate is garnering the most votes and is maximizing their chances of winning the election. If a politician should decide to take up policies that stray from the preferences of that median voter it would only result in a loss of votes for them and a gain in votes for their opponent. This particular idea helps explain why there is so much complaining every presidential election in reference to all the candidates being entirely too similar (different heads of the same beast).
We have to be careful, however, not to miss the true beauty and power of this idea. Its force doesn’t lie in the abilities of candidates to discover this point of equilibrium; the truth of the matter is that the equilibrium draws in individuals with or without their consent or knowledge. Individual candidates have no choice but to move towards the median lest they find themselves losers and fools.
Sadly, I have to confess that this idea wasn’t a product of my own musings. It was actually famously proposed by Duncan Black and later elaborated on by Anthony Downs a little over half a century ago. It’s classically known as the Median Voter Theorem and is now one of the foundations of modern political science. That being said, though its simplicity is its greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. Much like the simple supply and demand model used in introductory economics, too often its shortcomings are forgotten and its conclusion are carried far beyond their reach and applied where least applicable.
In our particular discussion we have yet to leave our fantasy world were uncertainty doesn’t exist. Also, we have yet to discuss changes in voting institutions; it has been assumed up to this point that candidates are running for a single member district whose winner is that person who has a majority of the votes. Finally, it has also been assumed that voters are organized along one dimension. This means that all individuals only relate to voting and government in one way (in a multi dimensional world voters have independent views on many issues and relate to their government in lots of ways, hence, the reasoning behind shifting amorphous majorities discussed in the last article ).
Let’s address the first assumption. What happens to this model when voters are assumed to be lazy, self-interested, and ignorant and politicians are assumed to be ambitious, self-interested, and ignorant? Put simply, things get interesting.
Having lives to live, voters now have to pay a cost for the power of knowledge and it’s a hefty one at that. Suddenly, voters have a never ending list of books and news papers placed before them. They have to take time to listen to what politicians, pundits, experts and scientist have to say about those things that concern them. Then they have to decide what is true, what is false, what they agree with, what they disagree with, what is wrong and finally what is right (Downs, 1957). But they still have work, or family, or a bad crack habit. They have their own problems independent of those politicians are constantly bemoaning. These concerns run the gamut, from the spiritual to the mundane, from the familial to the sexual, and from the social to the individual.
Of course, Individuals will budget themselves. Some, in a vain of apathy, will decide not to deal with the burdens of politics, allowing those with more pomp and wealth to worry of such things (Downs, 1957). Others will stubbornly hold that the tools of government are too precious and dangerous to be handled without supervision. Yet, as concerned as they may be they still lack the means to inform themselves; therefore, they confide, in those they trust, the power of their vote (Downs, 1957). This in particular is the underlying reason why, with a big enough population and enough time, all democracies evolve into representative democracies or republics (Downs, 1957). Yet here, the question then turns to, “in whom do I trust to have my vote?” Sadly, the costs of knowledge have not disappeared, at essence, they have really only shifted from questions concerning issues and policies to questions about the character, values, and the charisma of politicians (Downs, 1957; Ellen Riggle, 1992).
Politicians, being intelligent individuals, understand the position the voters find themselves in. They understand that people would rather be doing other things than reading policy stances or case studies. In response, politicians attempt to make themselves an easy sell to the voters by simplifying things (Downs, 1957). They use ideologies, political platforms, alliances with other politicians, stereotypes, and religious beliefs to make decisions simpler for the voter (Downs, 1957). Put simply, they try to make a world a place where you can vote for a blue animal that generally represents these things or a red animal that general represents those things. What they have done is given the multitudes what they want; they have lowered the costs of making a decision about things that people are ignorant of. With the use of heuristics, they try to make a multidimensional world seem one dimensional.
Yet, all is not finished. With voters delivered from their burdens it is now the politician that must deal with the plight of ignorance. They have no idea what their electorate wants (here keep in mind our last article). In other words they have no idea where the median voter lies. They have no basis to decide which heuristics will garner them the most votes. They are attempting to discover what is not there to be found, the will of the people. Just as the voter, politicians and the organizations they have created to support them, are left just as ignorant of the electorate as the electorate was ignorant of them.
There’s , however, a deal to be had by our beleaguered politicians with another set of actors, those lobbyists of such ill-repute who, not unlike the tempter in Eden, sell their wares of ignorance disguised as the fruits of knowledge to any soul willing to pay their price and lend them their ears. As previously mentioned, lobbyists and interests groups are organizations that seek to influence the terms of their government. Unlike political parties, however, Interest groups don’t seek political office; they accomplish their ends by means of the exploitation of ignorance and the manipulation of information (Downs, 1957).
With a chasm of ignorance separating voters and politician, interests groups can be seen as masons building bridges between our desperate parties. For bricks and mortar they use information and facts molded in such a way that voters and politicians only see what is meant to be seen. Lobbyist’ not only supply politicians with issues that are important to them, they give politicians the information they want politicians to know and legislation they want politicians to pass (of course we can’t neglect financial backing either but this isn’t something distinctive to interest groups) (Downs, 1957). They then turn to the voters and create the demand they want for the issues they care about by providing voters with the information they want voters to know and by conveniently providing the electorate with the politicians they want voters to vote for (Downs, 1957).
To be explicit, interests groups act thus because they are seeking to promote their particular issue, whether that be relief for beleaguered Haitians, pro-life legislation, federal regulation of financial institutions, or the protection of fuzzy furry animals in Alaska. Politicians buy into the deal because interests groups bring them sympathetic voters that think they are voting for a champion of whatever cause they find important. Voters play their part because they don’t know any better and don’t understand that issues are multidimensional.
Let’s be clear, however, I’m generalizing a great deal when talking about voters. Actually, I’m generalizing too much. I’ve assumed up until now that there is, among the voters, an understanding of truth and ignorance of truth. A closer approximation of reality would be to say that among voters there is some understanding of some truth and different types of ignorance (opinions some might call them).
For instance, let’s assume it to be true that a country’s economy can only be marginally controlled by the wills of our leaders, but, for the sake of example, we have two groups, one arguing that the economy can be greatly improved via lower taxes and the other arguing for the same but with lower interest rates. In terms of politics, the reality that neither method can greatly improve the economy doesn’t matter; what matters is that people have differing beliefs and are willing to put their money where their mouth is. We therefore end up in a world where the truth is almost of no consequence and we’re really just dealing with competing wrong answers.
How people go about forming their opinions and molding their worldviews is otherwise known as the subject of informational effects on voter preferences and is a field of social science unto itself. John Zaller’s Theory of Mass Media is of particular interest in this case. The basic premise of the idea, explained in his paper Information, Values, and Opinion, is that both an individual’s and a population’s opinions are based on the probability of the reception of certain types of message in relation to the beliefs they already have, which where themselves a function of the probability of the reception of certain types of information.
Though the name of the theory implies a strong role for a society’s media, it is more than capable of supporting other givers of information like our political parties or interest groups. As mentioned before, this particular theory lends itself nicely to a study of both individuals and general populations (Zaller, 1991). It’s hampered in that it only applies to a one dimensional world but, given that a good amount of the time people make decisions under the impression that politics are only right or left, it holds up relatively well (just as the median voter theorem does).Interestingly, the theory doesn’t concern itself with the truth or validity of given opinions. It really only concerns itself with the world of ignorance and uncertainty.
It begins with the individual. The main factors that decides an individual’s opinions are that person’s level of awareness (you could also think of this as the level of importance an individual attaches to a certain issue or their salience), their previously help opinions, and the probabilities of receiving certain types of messages (Zaller, 1991). At any given time an individual resides within one of three groups, still assuming a one dimensional right-left world: no opinion, left opinion, right opinion (Zaller, 1991). Given a distribution of preferences in a population, probabilities can be extrapolated for the number of people in a given group at a given time. From there you can track changes in a population’s opinion given changes in the types of messages being given and their frequency (Zaller, 1991).
If we take it to be true that interest groups use information to manipulate, this theory explains how they do it and to what degree they control outcomes. An interesting implication of this theory is that the people who are most aware are also those that are more likely to receive a particular type of message; meaning that the most informed are generally also those who are most stuck in their ways. Let’s not forget that to be the most informed doesn’t mean that you are the most informed concerning the truth; it just means you have the most information. It is entirely possible that a great deal of the information informed people get is either biased or untrue. Another interesting conclusion of this theory is that the people most swayed by new information are those that are of moderate ignorance with a moderate concern for politics; in other words, those that care enough to listen but don’t know enough to validate claims of truth. This is a fact not unnoticed by those seeking to use information to their benefit.
Already having an understanding of how important information and uncertainty are to shaping the opinions of the masses, if only informally, politicians with the help of their informational hit-men (interest groups) can then make moves to place themselves so as take up positions that favor them with votes. They can take advantage of those vaguely-aware middle voters, bringing to bear the full power of heuristic cues like race or party affiliation (Nicholas Valentino, 2002). What’s more, they do it so as to make sure the voter doesn’t even know they are making decisions in such a way (Nicholas Valentino, 2002).
There must certainly be something awry. This is no longer a story about the median voter or golden ticket equilibriums. The median voter now shifts and moves based on how information and ignorance are manipulated. Elections are therefore won by that fortunate politician that just so happens to be closest to that amorphous point on that fateful election day. It would seem that the savviest politicians know how to jump from one dimension to the next destroying one equilibrium and creating another in their favor all while still seeming honest and steadfast. They seem to be able to manipulate heuristics concerning our most superficial divisions, like race and religion, implicitly garnering themselves support without bearing the burden of discrimination (Nicholas Valentino, 2002). Yet, as askew as this may appear, it seems to well describe our world.
Placed in the context of our last discussion , where the fully multidimensional nature of voter preferences was uncovered, these ideas shed light on the how of democratic manipulation. It can be analogized as a micro view of politics within the context of macro principles. Here, we’ve disemboweled democracy, allowing its organs to spill out onto the floor for all to see. We know how political parties differ from other coalitions and organizations. We understand why there’s such a close relationship between politicians and interest groups. We can now see that political parties and interest groups persist because they provide a much demanded service to the electorate. If these groups are despicable, conniving, and amoral, it because the people demand that they be.
Finally and most important of all, we can see our world as one that tries to cover up the complex machinery of multidimensional disequilibrium with a puppet show of right-left politics. Behind our thin curtain we can now see the shadows of great machines slowly moving and guiding with strings the actions we see on stage, if only dimly so. The master of our story is not some elderly white bearded white fellow sitting on a golden throne with omnipotent power; instead, we find that our master is the sum of our own flaws and the restrictions nature places upon us. We are all groveling at the feet of a world that rules itself by decree of abstractions and numbers.
Scene III – A Respite and Interlude
Isn’t it a testament to arrogance and hypocrisy to point at the ignorance of others and cast them as guilty for the woes of our world? Yes, it is. I cannot help but confess that I’m guilty of casting stones. I’m ashamed and I wish it wasn’t so but I also can’t turn away from a thing that so incessantly calls out to me. I’m forced to ask myself, Isn’t it true that at the day’s end we are all ourselves beggars, scrapping to do what we can and asking for everything else that eludes our grasps? Regardless of our inborn merits or ceaseless labor, we all fall short in the face of our own ignorance. We all have no choice but to make choices about things we know not of. We are forced to allow others to violently yank us from side to side tearing from our bodies our thin clothing, leaving us cold and naked with our ravenous hunger gnawing at our souls.
And like this I come to you again, asking. I ask for a step across a line drawn. If it’s our eternal curse to live damned in ignorance, let’s make a heaven out of this hell and breathe in the smoke that constantly surrounds us, challenging those that seek to rule to then speak their word as best they can. I say we hold those ambitious few closer to the hell fires and see what remains. Many will turn to ash and return from whence they came. Others, perhaps made of finer metals, will be tempered by our licking flames.
Works Cited
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