Re: [apsa_itp] a quiet revolution in democracy - Very quiet!

["Peter Muhlberger" <peter.muhlberger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Because I think it makes some important points and may have been lost
in that email problem I mentioned, I'm reposting a comment I made
earlier:

***

Hi Steffen:  I'm not sure I buy the idea of rational ignorance, albeit
it is deeply engrained in our field.  The fact is that a small portion
of the public, but still millions of people, is extremely informed
about politics and this is typically the best-educated part of the
public--the people you'd expect to be able to figure out that it's not
'economically rational' to learn about politics.  Same situation goes
for a closely related problem:  why people choose to participate
politically.  While there are a plethora of theory-saving solutions in
political science as to why intelligent people choose to be
politically involved and knowledgeable, I think those fall quite short
as well.  Check out Green and Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational Choice
for a more extended argument along these lines.  In a paper in
Political Communication, I offer the beginnings of an alternative
theory that may better explain political engagement.  The theory,
which taps self-regulation and self-perception theories in psychology,
suggests that strategic rationality is dependent on identity
construction and maintenance and that these identity processes can
require what Habermas calls 'communicative rationality'--a type of
rationality from which it is rational to participate politically and
obey ethical norms, unlike with economic rationality.  The gist is
that most Americans have not internalized a political identity because
their environment hasn't demanded it of them (and frankly, it's a
rather abstract beast).  People who do internalize such an identity
will be politically engaged and informed (some interesting research by
Koestner, Losier et al. along these lines in psychology).  The
problem, then, is not that it's irrational to be politically engaged
but that our world offers too little opportunity for meaningful
citizen engagement.  Our idealistic computer science colleagues may be
on to something, though I think a more engaged world would require a
long and difficult transformation of the average citizen and political
structures.

Peter

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