Apply for the 2015 ISFLC Liberty Fund Session on Political Ignorance and Competitive Governments by Jan 1st!

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. Students who are chosen to participate will be responsible for completing two readings in advance of the session: “Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter” by Ilya Somin and “Federalism, Liberty, and the Law” by James M. Buchanan. Readings will be sent to the participants via email as PDFs.

Here are some of the questions that will be raised in this Liberty Fund discussion session:

What explains 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?
You can find more information and apply for the session here. Applications are due January 1st!