Voting Americans have feelings about their social and economic status. Therefore, they will vote on those feelings. Assuming that we have an election procedure with negligible problems of corruption, Americans as a collective can voice their opinions on issues.
Here's why:
Firstly, we have a market of candidates who each signal their capabilities in the political world. Take the monopolistically competitive market of the Presidential Elections, where the parties with the most market or political power are the Democratic and Republican Party. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have exchanged blows on who has the most character, political will, and experience to provide an optimal period of leadership and prosperity. This is one way we can acquire information about our candidates.
Aside from the self-congratulations of politicians, pundits can serve as external signals of information. The media can reveal past voting records and behind-the-scenes personality sketches of each candidate. Let's not forget our special-interest organizations that each put together fact-based observations with a partisan edge on those running for or in office. Because specialization occurs in analyzing voting records and voting history by interest groups, the market for political candidates is beyond information-efficient. We not only have pure information to use to make a choice at the voting booth but we also have analyses and opinions by commentators, pundits, and single issue experts that voters trust. This would allow voters to make rational choices on candidates based on their values and special issues important to them.
I would make the point that since the political parties have oligopolistic market power over our voting system, there are some deadweight losses or social costs since we can't choose candidates wholly on what we believe. As an example: the majority of socialists won't vote for the socialist party because they know this party will not win. We can only choose from available candidates closest to our ideas with confidence that our choice amongst the dominant parties will win the election.
There is a very interesting and strong rebuttal to this economic analysis of voting in the USA. Amos Tversky, a Yale psychologist, put together a study that showed people aren't necessarily rational when using the available information people don't react the same way to similar information with a negative or positive twist.
I understand the plausibility with this argument as it certainly proves a point about humans and their perception of information. However, I don't believe that Tversky would be right in this case. In politics people will use information preferable to their arguments regardless of what pure information they have at hand.
For example, conservative media portray Hillary Clinton as an evil political figure. In other words they are trying to frame information about Clinton in a deceptive light. In my view people are stubborn and want to read or take in information that supports their initial opinions about Clinton. Conservatives read media with a right-wing edge. The information given to them by conservative political pundits and PACs will make no difference in how they react to pure information or facts. They will acquire pure information and frame it in their minds to accommodate conservative values. Overall, I would say that the political market is information-efficient for our own purposes and values.
In conclusion I believe we have a system that works fine with allowing voters to signal their opinions on issues as a collective. It would be more efficient in allowing the collective to signal their values if we had a more open democratic system - at least one that is friendlier to third party runs.
Just as an idea: if this is true, we as a collective are becoming more liberal as time goes on; the median-voter is probably left of center.
2008 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.