Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-369) and index.
Contents
1. Democratic Ideals and Realities -- 2. The Elusive Mandate: Elections and the Mirage of Popular Control -- 3. Tumbling Down into a Democratical Republick: "Pure Democracy" and the Pitfalls of Popular Control -- 4. A Rational God of Vengeance and of Reward? The Logic of Retrospective Accountability -- 5. Blind Retrospection: Electoral Responses to Droughts, Floods, and Shark Attacks -- 6. Musical Chairs: Economic Voting and the Specious Present -- 7. A Chicken in Every Pot: Ideology and Retrospection in the Great Depression -- 8. The Very Basis of Reasons: Groups, Social Identities, and Political Psychology -- 9. Partisan Hearts and Spleens: Social Identities and Political Change -- 10. It Feels Like We're Thinking: The Rationalizing Voter -- 11. Groups and Power: Toward a Realist Theory of Democracy -- Appendix: Retrospective Voting as Selection and Sanctioning.
Summary
Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government. --Publisher.
