Rational ignorance is the tendency among voters in an electoral democracy to be deliberately ignorant of political matters. For example, a majority of voters in a democracy choose not to have sufficient knowledge about the policies of different candidates and their likely consequences. American economist Anthony Downs popularized the idea in his 1957 book “An Economic Theory of Democracy” And this idea is often employed by economists from the Public Choice School to explain why politics works the way it does in the real world. The concept of rational ignorance was proposed to overturn the popular idea that voters in a democracy make rational decisions to choose their political leaders.
So why are voters ignorant of politics in a democracy? The principle of rational ignorance states that voters have little incentive to invest the time and effort required to understand politics because they have little influence on electoral politics anyway. For example, the probability of a person’s vote changing the outcome of an election is zero. As American economist Gordon Tullock once said, “You are more likely to be killed while driving to the polling booth, because your vote will change the outcome of the election.” Therefore, voters have little reason to invest in acquiring all the relevant knowledge that is needed to make informed decisions and choose to remain ignorant of matters relating to politics only. For example, voters are unlikely to make the necessary effort to learn basic economics before forming an opinion on candidates’ economic policies.
Even if voters want to make informed decisions, the nature of electoral democracy may compel them to choose candidates who are far from perfect. Generally elections are fought on many issues. That is, voters are not able to vote for or against a candidate on the basis of personal issues. Instead, they are forced to select the candidates on the basis of the overall package offered by them. So ineligible candidates can still win elections by agreeing more on some core issues than others. This is in contrast to how people make decisions in other areas of life. For example, in the market, people can decide to buy or not to buy many different items, from cars to toothpaste. They have to pay a price for anything they decide to buy, and so they have a significant incentive to invest time and effort in gathering all the necessary information. It should be noted that those who vote do not get any direct personal benefit from voting for the right candidate, even though it may benefit the entire group in the long run. In other words, voters do not spend time and effort obtaining relevant information before casting their vote because the cost of obtaining such information often outweighs the personal benefits that they, as individuals, can derive from such information. This is known as the Downs paradox or the voting paradox.
This tendency of voters to remain ignorant of politics has negative consequences. One is that election results can be influenced by some minor issues, while other issues which may be more important are suppressed. When voters invest too little to understand which issues really matter, it becomes even easier for politicians to mislead and exploit them.
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