Now accessible online at no cost through NYU Press, with me among the many contributors.
NYU Press Democracy’s Challenges: 100 Ideas is a fresh volume issued by New York University Press, guided by editors Robert Bauer, Samuel Issacharoff, Richard Pildes, and Rosa Po. It collects one hundred concise chapters proposing improvements to American democracy, authored by specialists from a range of disciplines and representing a broad spectrum of viewpoints. I am among the contributors. And thanks to a grant from NYU, it is freely available! You can download it here. The individual chapters are also accessible separately on the NYU Democracy Project website. Other contributors include renowned scholars and commentators, such as VC co-blogger Jonathan Adler (William and Mary), Randall Kennedy (Harvard), Samuel Moyn (Yale), Andrew McCarthy (National Review), Molly Reynolds (Brookings Institution), Rick Hasen, John McGinnis (Northwestern), Julia Azari, Aziz Huq (Chicago), Robert George (Princeton), and many more. My own piece is titled “Strengthen Democracy by Empowering People to Vote with their Feet.” Here is an excerpt:
A shadow hangs over American democracy: widespread political ignorance. This specter is by no means unfamiliar, yet it is intensified by rising political polarization, which has amplified the tendency of many voters to be strongly biased in assessing the information they possess. The difficulty of political ignorance is closely tied to another flaw in how ballots work: the near-ineffectiveness of the individual voter, who faces only an infinitesimal chance to influence policy. There is no simple answer to these connected challenges. Nonetheless, they can be softened by enabling people to make more decisions through “voting with their feet,” rather than solely at the ballot box. Decades of survey research—summarized in works like my book Democracy and Political Ignorance—reveal that most voters often lack even basic knowledge about government and public policy… Many studies also indicate that voters frequently struggle to evaluate the political information they do encounter… There is no straightforward remedy for the twin problems of political ignorance and the powerlessness of individual voters. Yet one with considerable promise is empowering people to “vote with their feet.” Individuals can exercise this form of choice by moving between jurisdictions in a federal system, selecting the government policies under which they wish to live. They can also do so through international migration… Foot voting can also occur in the private sector, when people use it to obtain services traditionally provided by state and local governments… There is substantial room to expand opportunities for foot voting. Delegating more governmental functions to state and local authorities would create greater policy diversity across issues and broaden the avenues for foot voting. In recent years, mobility has diminished due to widespread exclusionary zoning, which has impeded the construction of new housing in many areas where Americans would like to relocate—especially the poor and disadvantaged. We can dismantle that barrier by ending exclusionary zoning, or at least curtailing it through a combination of litigation and political action. We can also bolster foot voting by leaving more matters to the private sector. Foot voting among private-sector entities—such as private planned communities—can enhance choice and reduce moving costs, even compared to foot voting between jurisdictions in a federal system… Finally, we can broaden foot voting and political freedom by removing barriers to international migration, thereby enabling millions more people to escape poverty and oppression….
