Don't Cry For Me, Hong Kong

The "rational abstention" argument in David Johnson's piece on voter ignorance presents democracy-lovers with a cynical challenge: do citizens really have any stake in elections? According to Johnson's theory, voters in large democracies have very little reason to actually exercise their franchise—that is, they are rational in declining to vote. Johnson reaches this conclusion by focusing on the instrumental  value of an individual's vote. Since the probability that any single vote will decide an election is vanishingly small, even those voters who place a premium on one outcome over the other (that is, voters who value Candidate A over Candidate B to the tune of a couple thousand—or even million—dollars) can expect a laughably small expected payoff. In the face of such nihilistic odds, the real surprise is why anyone votes at all.

But the real world furnishes us with examples of ordinary citizens going to great lengths—and great personal cost—to secure their vote. Recently, Hong Kong has been wracked by protests over the slow pace of democratization in this British-colony-turned-Chinese-Special-Autonomous-Zone. The culmination of months of unease over the increasingly authoritarian control exerted by Beijing, this weekend's protests featured the use of tear gas and pepper spray, and still the protestors turned out in the tens of thousands to demand their right to democratic elections. How does such passion develop in the apathetic atmosphere predicted by Johnson's rational abstention argument? In a fully democratic Hong Kong, these protestors' votes would have low instrumental value—surely not worth the costs associated with protesting against heavily-armed and aggressive police.

Two hypothesis could explain why those in Hong Kong do, in fact, care about their franchise. The Expressive Voter hypothesis, considered by Johnson, posits that people vote to express something about themselves: civic-mindedness, for example. Going to the polls and voting for a candidate or referendum outcome gives intrinsic utility. The expressive appeal of voting may help to explain why the citizens of Hong Kong have gone to such lengths to demand free elections. A second hypothesis I would put forward is one we will likely come across later in Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. In his book, Caplan argues that the so-called Self-Interested Voter Hypothesis (SIVH) is inaccurate. That is, he contends that people don't vote by considering possible pay-offs to themselves, but rather vote according to their vision of what the best society would be. Although disregarding the SIVH doesn't eliminate the cost-benefit analysis entirely, it certainly helps to divorce voting from its instrumental value to the individual voter. Under this model, the citizens of Hong Kong value their franchise because it is an integral part of their vision of the best society (a democratic one), and not because of specific benefits they expect to receive through it.

Whatever the explanation, the implication is clear: people care about their vote, regardless of the strong (and rational) forces urging apathy. This concern is on display in Hong Kong.