On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/PERG.Achen.pdf>
>
> Gotta love this, from the conclusion (after the paper demonstrates that
> voters punish incumbent parties/presidents for droughts and shark attacks
> that they had nothing to do with):
>
>> Our account of democratic politics strikes directly at key assumptions in
>> two different contemporary schools of thought. Perhaps most obviously, it
>> questions the ability of ordinary citizens to assess their public life
>> critically, listen to the proposals for change coming from contenders for
>> public office, and then choose between the candidates in accordance with
>> their own values. Like most survey researchers who have talked
>> extensively to real voters, we believe that few such citizens exist.
BTW, if you're interested on the history of the polisci literature on the rationality of voters, you might enjoy the survey article Louis Menand wrote on this topic in the New Yorker last year:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/040830crat_atlarge
(It cites this Bartels and Achen paper, BTW, and places them in context.)
Michael