ABSTRACT
Almost all work in political science and political economy assumes that people have certain basic desires-for power, money, and so on-and that these desires translate into policy preferences. Yet, a very fundamental result in rational choice theory, first stated by Downs, is that people are rationally ignorant about politics. And many undoubtedly are. Larry Bartels, for example, reports that a solid majority of Americans favored Bush’s proposal to repeal the federal estate tax, even though the tax affects only the wealthiest one or two percent of Americans, and even though the same majority believes that the government can and should reduce inequality.
