Chapter ǴDz: Civic Religion Reasserted ȂȆȀdictators; others complain about too little. “So, while just about everyone
has her [sic] theory of government failure, at least half must be wrong.”
“[M]any examples of political-market failure are mutually contradictory
and methodologically unsound” (chap.ȀȂ, quotations from pp.ȀȇȁandȀȇȀ).
Wittman’s arguments are not only feeble but sometimes inconsistent.
“[O]pportunism by politicians is mitigated when they are paid above-
market salaries and then threatened with losing office if they shirk. Ļe
fact that candidates engage in very costly election campaigns is consistent
with the hypothesis that holding office pays above-market salaries” (p.ȁȆ).
What, then, has become of the much trumpeted competition? Don’t the
costly campaigns dissipate wealth? And how does Wittman’s judgment
about politicians’ salaries square with his equally blithe judgment (p.Ȁǿȅ)
that bureaucrats’ wagesarekept at the competitive level?
Ironically, Wittman’s book, like the precursor article, was published at
the University of Chicago, a citadel of positivism in economic theory and
of insistence that theories be falsifiable. (I interpret this, perhaps charita-
bly, as insistence that theories have actual content, as opposed to being for-
mulated with built-in immunity to any adverse evidence.) Wittman him-
self makes self-congratulatory remarks about sound and unsound method-
ologies. His two concluding chapters, totaling onlyȀȂpages, bear the titles
“Ļe Testing of Ļeory” and “Epilogue: Ļe Burden of Proof.” (Pageȁhad
already placed “the burden of proof ... on those who argue that democratic
political markets are inefficient.”) Ļe reader expects Wittman at last to
say what he would recognize as weighty evidence or argument against his
thesis and say how it stands up to the test.
Yet he does not follow through. Even so, he ends his book claiming
to have “carried over to models of political-market failure” the suspicion
about underlying assumptions that economists properly apply to asser-
tions of failure in the business sector. “I have argued that voters make
informed judgments and that democratic markets are competitive” (p.ȀȈȁ).
“Economists do not dwell on business error or pathological consumer
behavior.” Instead, they “analyze the normal and look for efficiency expla-
nations for abnormal market behavior. Similarly, political scientists should
not dwell on the mistakes made by political markets” (p.ȀȈȂn.). But he
does not claim to have actually shown that democracy is efficient. Ļe
fuzziness that remains renders his thesis even less testable than it might
have been if more sharply formulated. Again he insinuates that the burden
of proof lies on those who would deny the presumption of efficiency to
economic markets and political markets alike.