Summary of Achen and Bartel’s Democracy for Realists – The Universe from an Intentional Stance

I just finished binge-reading Achen and Bartel’s great book Democracy for Realists and decided to write up a summary and a few comments to aid my memory and share some of the most interesting insig…

I just finished binge-reading Achen and Bartel’s great book Democracy for Realists and decided to write up a summary and a few comments to aid my memory and share some of the most interesting insights. The folk theory of democracy (Since chapter 1 contains little of interest besides giving a foretaste of later chapters, I will start with the content of chapter 2.) The “folk theory” of democracy is roughly the following: Voters have a set of informed policy preferences (e.g., on abortion, social security, climate change, taxes, etc.) and vote for the candidate or party whose policy preferences

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