Voter Rationality and Democratic Government

From a 1996 survey comparing the views of economists and ordinary voters, Bryan Caplan deduces several biasesanti-market, anti-foreign, pessimistic, and makework biasesto support his thesis that voters are rationally irrational, i.e., that, aware of the inconsequentiality of their votes, they rationally indulge their preferences for public policies that have harmful results. Yet if the standard of comparison is the public’s opposition to harmful policies, rather than the level of its opposition relative to that of economists, the biases disappear. In absolute terms, voters support free trade and are against protectionism, such that free-trade agreements are more prevalent among democratic, rather than autocratic, regimes. Finally, the protectionist policies that are adopted in this country are the product of interest-group politics, not of voters’ wrongheaded policy preferences

The dynamics of party relabeling

Contrary to longstanding arguments that equate parties with durable, information-rich brand names, relabeling of parties is not rare, and in many countries it is not even very unusual. This paper provides the first effort to document this neglected phenomenon. It finds that across European democracies, roughly a third of all parties have relabeled themselves at least once since 1945, and a similar proportion of elections include at least one party running under a new name. It then presents analyses of why parties change names more frequently in some circumstances, finding support for three explanations derived from the existing literature: parties with longer-standing brands are less likely to shed them, but relabeling is more likely for parties that suffer electoral setbacks and for parties in weaker party systems. Finally, it presents evidence that the end of Soviet communism made left parties more likely to rename themselves. ∗Mi-son Kim studies comparative political parties and electoral systems with a regional interest in East Asia. Her research agenda focuses on the strategic behavior of political parties in their interaction with institutional conditions, public opinion, and political culture. She studies how these patterns of strategic behavior affect governance and policy-making processes. Her dissertation examines the causes and conse