We are thrilled to announce that our friends at Liberty Fund will be running a 15 person round table discussion at the 2015 International SFL Conference. This invite-only session (application below) will be held on the afternoon of Saturday February 15 for a group of highly motivated students eager to contribute to a lively intellectual discussion on the below topic. Liberty Fund sessions feature in-depth, Socratic-style discussion about the ideas, questions, and challenges raised by a set of readings with a discussion leader and fifteen participants from various backgrounds. The session is facilitated by the discussion leader, but the primary emphasis is on the contributions of the participants. Students who are chosen to participate will be responsible for completing a set of readings in advance of the session. Readings will be sent to the participants via email as PDFs.
Below you can find more information about the session. Applications are now closed, if you’re accepted you’ll be notified.
Political Ignorance and Competitive Governments
Despite rising education levels and increased availability of information due to modern technology, public knowledge about politics is disturbingly low. Poll results have consistently shown that Americans believe, on average, that foreign aid accounts for almost a third of the federal budget. This is more than the country spends on Social Security, or Medicare, or defense. The reality is that foreign aid only accounts for one percent of the federal budget. Recent surveys have also found that only 42 percent of the American people can name the three branches of the federal government. Less surprisingly, as voters, individuals rarely pay due attention to economic theory. The defense of trade barriers, for example, usually rests on pre-Ricardian mercantilist notions that were refuted two hundred years ago.
What explains this widespread political ignorance? What are its main implications for the quality of democratic governance? Is there anything that can be done to mitigate this problem? In particular, what is the role of government competition in reducing the impact of political ignorance? Is federalism, as James Buchanan has argued, an effective institutional structure for constraining government and protecting individual liberty in the face of widespread political ignorance? These are some of the questions that will be raised in this Liberty Fund discussion session.
The reading list includes section from the following:
- “Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter”— Ilya Somin
- “Federalism, Liberty, and the Law” — James M. Buchanan
Applications have now closed, if you’re accepted you will be notified.