Review of Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

This bold, imaginative book advances an entirely new theory of voters’ behavior.The starting point for this theory is that individuals are endowed with a set of beliefs, ora worldview, and derive psychological benefits from acting in accordance with these beliefs.However, the beliefs of most people about many issues are systematically wrong, in the sensethat the world really works differently from the way people like to imagine. For example, amajority of people think that free trade is bad for the economy, while in fact it is deemed bymost economists to be good.[...]