Democracy for Realists

Interesting read on democracy. The author's main aim is to show that the folk theory of democracy (people vote for the party who best represents their values) and the theory of retrospective voting (voters approves or disapproves the sitting ruling person/party) are wrong and instead they propose another theory in which people vote according to which groups they identify with (ethnicity, religion, sex, etc).

While I can't disprove their case it does feel a bit weak for to me. The conclusions they draw seem to often go beyond the facts they present and a big issue is that they almost exclusively discuss and analyze US political history. Schweiz is mentioned when discussing more direct democracy, the "Social Credit Party" in Canada is discussed and when discussing the political ramifications of the great depression a more international case is presented, but otherwise it is only US politics. While I can see tendencies for what they are arguing in other countries also, it is not enough to convince me differences between political systems and institutions won't have any impact on the issues they discuss.

Still it is a good book which makes challenges the reader to think deeper about democracy and it has a lot of small tid bits that catch the eye. Like how people give different answers in surveys with different wording or how even educated voters often don't know the facts on public issues.