IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v124y2005i3p437-451.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-deception as the root of political failure

Author

Listed:
  • Tyler Cowen

Abstract

I consider models of political failure based on self-deception. Individuals discard free information when that information damages their self-image and thus lowers their utility. More specifically, individuals prefer to feel good about their previously chosen affiliations and shape their worldviews accordingly. This model helps explain the relative robustness of political failure in light of extensive free information, and it helps explain the rarity of truth-seeking behavior in political debate. The comparative statics predictions differ from models of either Downsian or expressive voting. For instance, an increased probability of voter decisiveness does not necessarily yield a better result. I also consider political parties as institutions and whether political errors cancel in the aggregate. I find that political failure based on self-deception is very difficult to eliminate. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Suggested Citation

  • Tyler Cowen, 2005. "Self-deception as the root of political failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 437-451, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:124:y:2005:i:3:p:437-451
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-005-2058-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-005-2058-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-005-2058-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geoffrey Brennan & Alan Hamlin, 1998. "Expressive voting and electoral equilibrium," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 149-175, April.
    2. Susan Feigenbaum & David M. Levy, 1996. "The Technological Obsolescence Of Scientific Fraud," Rationality and Society, , vol. 8(3), pages 261-276, August.
    3. George A. Akerlof, 1989. "The Economics Of Illusion," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 1-15, March.
    4. Sears, David O. & Lau, Richard R. & Tyler, Tom R. & Allen, Harris M., 1980. "Self-Interest vs. Symbolic Politics in Policy Attitudes and Presidential Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 670-684, September.
    5. Klein, Daniel B., 1994. "If Government is so Villainous, How come Government Officials don't seem like Villains?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 91-106, April.
    6. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1982. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 805-824, December.
    7. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    8. Friedman, David, 1987. "Cold Houses in Warm Climates and Vice Versa: A Paradox of Rational Heating," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1089-1097, October.
    9. Matthew Rabin & Joel L. Schrag, 1999. "First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 37-82.
    10. Bryan Caplan, 2001. "Rational Ignorance versus Rational Irrationality," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(1), pages 3-26, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kärnä, Anders & Öhberg, Patrik, 2022. "Misrepresentation and Migration," Working Paper Series 1445, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 11 May 2023.
    2. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    3. Hillman, Arye L., 2010. "Expressive behavior in economics and politics," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 403-418, December.
    4. T. Durant, 2011. "Making executive politics mutually productive and fair," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 141-172, June.
    5. Hamlin, Alan & Jennings, Colin, 2011. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 645-670, July.
    6. Stephen C. Miller, 2009. "Economic Bias and Ideology: Evidence from the General Social Survey," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 25(Fall 2009), pages 31-49.
    7. Jan Schnellenbach & Christian Schubert, 2019. "A note on the behavioral political economy of innovation policy," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 1399-1414, November.
    8. Scheffer, Niklas & Sturm, Silke & Islam, Zahurul, 2021. "Implizite Motive in der politischen Kommunikation," Edition HWWI: Chapters, in: Straubhaar, Thomas (ed.), Neuvermessung der Datenökonomie, volume 6, pages 173-197, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    9. Bryan Caplan & Stephen Miller, 2012. "Positive versus normative economics: what’s the connection? Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy and the General Social Survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 241-261, January.
    10. Kärnä, Anders & Karlsson, Johan & Engberg, Erik & Svensson, Peter, 2020. "Political Failure: A Missing Piece in Innovation Policy Analysis," Working Paper Series 1334, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 21 Apr 2022.
    11. Thomas Clark Durant & Michael Weintraub & Daniel Houser & Shuwen Li, 2018. "Trust in the executive," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(5), pages 609-624, September.
    12. Schreiner, Nicolas, 2021. "Changes in Well-Being Around Elections," Working papers 2021/03, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    13. Bjørnskov, Christian, 2008. "Healthy and happy in Europe? On the association between happiness and life expectancy over time," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1750-1759, April.
    14. Sturm, Silke, 2019. "Political Competition: How to Measure Party Strategy in Direct Voter Communication using Social Media Data?," Hamburg Discussion Papers in International Economics 1, University of Hamburg, Department of Economics.
    15. T Clark Durant & Michael Weintraub, 2014. "An institutional remedy for ethnic patronage politics," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(1), pages 59-78, January.
    16. Straubhaar, Thomas (ed.), 2021. "Neuvermessung der Datenökonomie," Edition HWWI, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI), volume 6, number 6.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    2. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2014. "Behavioral public choice: A survey," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 14/03, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    3. Mikael Elinder, 2012. "Correcting mistakes: cognitive dissonance and political attitudes in Sweden and the United States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 235-249, October.
    4. Hillman, Arye L., 2010. "Expressive behavior in economics and politics," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 403-418, December.
    5. Hamlin, Alan & Jennings, Colin, 2011. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 645-670, July.
    6. Fredrik Carlsson & Olof Johansson‐Stenman, 2010. "Why Do You Vote and Vote as You Do?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 495-516, November.
    7. Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2009. "Voting Motives, Group Identity, and Social Norms," Working Papers in Economics 366, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    8. Jan Schnellenbach & Christian Schubert, 2019. "A note on the behavioral political economy of innovation policy," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 1399-1414, November.
    9. Damien Bol & André Blais & Jean-François Laslier, 2018. "A mixed-utility theory of vote choice regret," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 461-478, September.
    10. Bryan Caplan, 2003. "The Logic of Collective Belief," Rationality and Society, , vol. 15(2), pages 218-242, May.
    11. Sturm, Silke, 2019. "Political Competition: How to Measure Party Strategy in Direct Voter Communication using Social Media Data?," Hamburg Discussion Papers in International Economics 1, University of Hamburg, Department of Economics.
    12. Schnellenbach, Jan, 2012. "Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 266-277.
    13. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    14. Author-Name: Alan S. Blinder & Alan B. Krueger, 2004. "What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(1), pages 327-397.
    15. Ming Li & Dipjyoti Majumdar, 2010. "A Psychologically Based Model of Voter Turnout," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(5), pages 979-1002, October.
    16. François Facchini & Louis Jaeck, 2019. "Ideology and the rationality of non-voting," Rationality and Society, , vol. 31(3), pages 265-286, August.
    17. Nunnari, Salvatore & Zapal, Jan, 2017. "A Model of Focusing in Political Choice," CEPR Discussion Papers 12407, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Stephen Drinkwater & Colin Jennings, 2007. "Who are the expressive voters?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 179-189, July.
    19. Alessandro Morselli, 2021. "Individual decisions and collective choices in the history of economic thought," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 77-96,97-11.
    20. Saito, Hiroharu, 2022. "Loss aversion for the value of voting rights: WTA/WTP ratios for a ballot," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:124:y:2005:i:3:p:437-451. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.