votingI’ve come across the concepts of “rational ignorance” and “expressive voting”, and I’ve tried to think of an example of expressive voting. But doesn’t expressive voting automatically imply rational ignorance, since when one votes to express a certain opinion, he does explicitly not do this rationally, but expressively. Or not?
Can anyone give a hypothetical or even real-life example for the two?
Suppose I go out and vote for Ralph Nader or Ron Paul or Willie Nelson in a presidential election. My vote has no instrumental purpose since my ballot will not tip the balance, and hence I will not benefit from the enactment of the candidate’s promises. I also cannot be (legally) paid for my vote, and I am aware of all this. Yet by voting I express my support for democracy, underdogs, poor Americans, poor foreigners, the environment, marijuana, or dislike for the establishment. I might even get a sticker or a button that all my friends can see. As long as the joy I get out doing this exceeds the cost of voting, it may well be rational. So far, so good.
On the other hand, some folks, like Bryan Caplan, argue that since the costs are so small, this encourages the adoption of beliefs that are against one’s self interest, but feel great when they are expressed. I think he uses the example of support of protectionism. Restrictions on trade make goods more expensive, but the cost of holding that belief is small since my vote does not change the world in any meaningful way. This encourages beliefs that are irrational, in the sense of being against your self-interest.
So, to sum up, the two are correlated or systematically linked, but they certainly don’t have to be. It’s an empirical issue.
Dimitriy’s explanation is excellent. The two concepts are linked insofar as they both tell us that democratic processes may “fail”, in the sense that people don’t (honestly) reveal their preferences about policy. But besides that, there is not necessarily an overlap.
Here’s an example. Let’s say a person faces two choices first:
“L” = learning about the platforms of the two candidates”, with an associated expected payoff of 5
“NL” = not learn., with an expected payoff of 4
So he picks L. Then after knowing about the candidates A and B, he has to choose between them:
A’s platform gives him payoff 3; and supporting candidate A gives him additional payoff from being able to express his personality, which is worth 2
B’s platform gives him payoff 4; and no additional payoff from “expressiveness”
Thus he votes for A, and we say he engages in expressive voting, because the value of expression causes him to choose a candidate that he otherwise wouldn’t have chosen.
In this “model” we assume that the choice to be ignorant or not comes before the choice to choose a candidate, which certainly seems intuitive. Under this assumption, you can certainly have expressive voting without rational ignorance.
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