newish Bartels paper
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/thinking.pdf
It Feels Like Weíre Thinking: The Rationalizing Voter and Electoral Democracy
Christopher H. Achen Department of Politics and Center for the Study of Democratic Politics Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 achen@princeton.edu
Larry M. Bartels Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International A§airs Center for the Study of Democratic Politics Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 bartels@princeton.edu
Abstract
The familiar image of rational electoral choice has voters weighing
the com-
peting candidatesí strengths and weaknesses, calculating comparative
dis-
tances in issue space, and assessing the presidentís management of
foreign
a§airs and the national economy. Indeed, once or twice in a lifetime, a
national or personal crisis does induce political thought. But most
of the
time, the voters adopt issue positions, adjust their candidate
perceptions,
and invent facts to rationalize decisions they have already made. The
im-
plications of this distinctionó between genuine thinking and its
dayñtoñday
counterfeitó strike at the roots of both positive and normative
theories of
electoral democracy.