George Mason University School of Law is identified in The Bob Zadek Show as the academic affiliation of Professor Ilya Somin, a professor of law who focuses on constitutional law and property law issues. Somin appeared on the program to discuss voter ignorance and his book Democracy and Political Ignorance, subtitled Why Smaller Government is Smarter Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013). The excerpt does not describe the school’s history, curriculum, location, or institutional character; it names the school only as Somin’s academic home and as the setting from which his scholarship on political ignorance reaches the show’s audience.
Somin’s affiliation and field
Bob Zadek introduced Somin as a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, noting that he focuses on constitutional law and property law issues and that he is the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance, which Zadek described as the focal point of the conversation Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013). Zadek also referred to the book as about to be published. The introduction frames Somin’s expertise as the basis for the episode’s discussion of voter ignorance, and the school’s name functions in the episode as a credential rather than as a subject of discussion in its own right.
The argument Somin brought to the show
The substance of the episode concerns Somin’s account of why voters remain uninformed. Somin told Zadek that the problem of voter ignorance has an effect on almost all the other problems seen in government policy, and that if public opinion influences policy while the public is ignorant, that influence will often be a bad influence Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013). He cited survey data showing that most of the public greatly overestimates the share of the federal budget spent on foreign aid, believing it to be at least 5 to 10 percent when in reality it is less than 1 percent, while underestimating spending on entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. He also cited a Kaiser Foundation poll conducted in April finding that 42 percent of the public did not realize that Obamacare was still the law, and a later poll finding that 79 percent had heard nothing or very little about the Obamacare exchanges.
Somin further told Zadek that a 2006 poll found only 42 percent of the public could name the three branches of the federal government, and that the public often has trouble distinguishing events for which politicians can be credited or blamed from those for which they cannot. He gave the examples of incumbents being rewarded or punished for short-term economic changes they very likely had nothing to do with causing, of incumbent politicians getting a boost when local sports teams win championships, and of governors in farm states being more likely to be blamed for droughts that reduce farm prices. The underlying mechanism, Somin said, is that the chance any one vote will make a difference in an election is infinitesimally small—perhaps about one in 60 million in a presidential election—so the average voter has very little incentive to spend more than minimal time learning about politics and government.
Rational ignorance and political fans
Somin distinguished voting from becoming informed. Voting, he told Zadek, is an extremely low-cost activity, usually maybe half an hour of one’s time at most, so it can make rational sense to vote if one cares about fellow citizens and sees a substantial difference between the two sides. Acquiring more than a minimal amount of political knowledge, by contrast, is much more costly in time and effort, producing the equilibrium seen in the real world: large numbers of people voting while most of them do not know very much about what they are voting on Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013).
Somin also described what he called in the book “political fans”—people who enjoy following politics and cheering on their favorite party or candidate, much as sports fans follow teams without expecting to influence the outcome of games. Such people, he said, know more about politics than the average person, but they often do a poor job of evaluating the information they know, tending to overvalue information that confirms their preexisting views and to ignore or undervalue anything that cuts against them. Studies, he said, find that the people who know the most about politics are some of the most biased in how they evaluate what they know.
Across episodes
Only one episode in the excerpts, the 2013-09-21 interview with Ilya Somin, touches on George Mason University School of Law, so the excerpts show no development in how the school is treated across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpt does not state where the school is located, when it was founded, how it is organized, or what programs it offers. It does not name a dean, a curriculum, or any other faculty member. It does not describe any relationship between the school and the subjects discussed beyond Somin’s affiliation and his authorship of the book. Nothing in the excerpt indicates that the school itself took any position on the questions raised in the episode.