New Book on “Democracy’s Challenges: 100 Ideas”

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NYU Press

Democracy’s Challenges: 100 Ideas is a new book published by New York University Press, and edited by Robert Bauer, Samuel Issacharoff, Richard Pildes, and Rosa Po. It includes 100 short chapters on how to improve American democracy, written by experts from a variety of disciplines, and representing a wide range of views. I am one of the contributors. And, thanks to a grant from NYU, it’s available for free! You can download it here. The individual chapters are also available separately at the NYU Democracy project website.

Other contributors include prominent 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 contribution is “Strengthen Democracy by Empowering People to Vote with their Feet.” Here’s an excerpt:

A specter is haunting American democracy: widespread voter ignorance. The specter is not a new one, by any means. But it is exacerbated by growing political polarization, which has accentuated the tendency of many voters to be highly biased in evaluating the information they do know. The problem of political ignorance is closely linked to another shortcoming of the ballot box: the near-powerlessness of the individual voter, who has only an infinitesimally small chance of affecting policy. There is no easy solution to these interlinked challenges. But they can be mitigated by empowering people to make more decisions by “voting with their feet,” instead of at the ballot box.

Decades of survey data – summarized in works like my book Democracy and Political Ignorance – show that most voters often don’t know even basic facts about government and public policy… Many studies also show that most voters often do a poor job of evaluating the political information they do learn…

There is no simple solution to the twin problems of political ignorance and the powerlessness of individual voters. But one that has great potential is empowering people to “vote with their feet.” People can vote with their feet between jurisdictions in a federal system, choosing which government policies they wish to live under. They can also do so through international migration…. Foot voting can also occur in the private sector, when people use it to provide services traditionally associated with state and local governments….

There is much that can be done to enhance foot voting opportunities. Decentralizing more functions of government to the state and local level would create more space for policy diversity on a variety of issues and open up more opportunities for foot voting. In recent years, mobility has decreased due to widespread exclusionary zoning, which has made it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand in many places where Americans would like to move – especially the poor and disadvantaged. We can break down that barrier by ending exclusionary zoning, or at least curtailing it through a combination of litigation and political action.

We can also enhance foot voting by leaving more issues to the private sector. Foot voting between private sector organizations – such as private planned communities – can enhance choice and lower moving costs, even as compared to foot voting between jurisdictions in a federal system….

Finally, we can expand foot voting and political freedom by breaking down barriers to international migration, thereby enabling millions more people to escape poverty and oppression….

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New Book on “Democracy’s Challenges: 100 Ideas”

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New Book on “Democracy’s Challenges: 100 Ideas”

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