THE DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA: Voters Are Not Rational Actors

 

A democracy's stability can be compared to the stability of a free market. It hinges on the premise that individuals act rationally within a system devoid of overwhelming external influences. Overall, they opt for responsible governance over the long term.

However, the democratic dilemma lies in the possibility that those called upon to make informed choices might not always be able to do so.

A well-functioning democracy relies on its citizens to make reasoned decisions, particularly when casting their votes in elections to select the most qualified candidates who can realize their vision of an ideal society. Through their votes, individuals wield the power to shape their society's leadership, laws, and policies. However, voters do not always exhibit rational behaviour.

The significance of rational voting becomes evident when reflecting on numerous historical instances where democratic societies elected leaders who caused significant harm.

The issue of whether, when, and how humans are rational has been a longstanding debate in the social sciences. Human rationality generally pertains to the ability to make choices that align with presumed goals - essentially, optimal decisions. However, the criteria used to gauge rationality remain a subject of debate.

On the one hand, objective measures can be employed to assess voters' knowledge, comprehension, and preferences concerning the issues at hand. This aligns with the concept of objective rationality.

For instance, to appraise a candidate's capacity to actualize an individual's vision of an ideal society, one must understand the positions presented by various candidates. One must incorporate this understanding into their voting choice. The findings derived from these metrics often suggest that voters tend to be irrational. This is because the reasons behind their decisions are often unrelated to the key issues.

The pivotal question revolves around whether voters assess candidates, make voting decisions, and actually vote rationally.

Rational actors are decision-makers who select an option based on calculated expectations of society's overall benefit. Such an actor considers goals, alternatives, consequences, and choices in alignment with their values. Voters make informed decisions when their voting behaviour is rooted in their evaluations of a candidate's performance or capabilities (candidate evaluation).

In general, rational voters cast their votes with a forward-looking approach that selects candidates with positive attributes, rather than a backward-looking approach that maximizes incentives.

Nonetheless, there is compelling evidence from various Nigerian elections indicating that voters, in many cases, behave irrationally.

An overview of elections in Nigeria since its democracy attempts identified political partisanship as one of the most robust factors in predicting voter intentions and choices.
For example, when a voter aligned with Party A votes for a Party A candidate, even if they perceive the competing Party B candidate as more capable of realizing their goals, such as reforming society, this is not a rational choice but a consequence of staunch partisanship.

Furthermore, ethnic identification has also emerged as a significant predictor in explaining voters' choices in Nigeria. Given multiple options, voters are more inclined to vote for the candidate they believe shares their ethnic identity.

However, greed and poverty remain the most significant factor in the Nigerian context. This is evident during election periods when political parties compete for votes. A variety of divisibles are distributed, including cash, perishables like rice, and others. A party that promises the poor these benefits now, later, and in the future will be most likely to gain their loyalty.

In the absence of adequate efforts to address poverty in the country, poverty will continue to influence people's voting behaviour in a negative way. Until the government implements egalitarian policies, the poor will continue to trade their loyalty for bags of rice and odourless fufu. Under these hegemonic political parties in Nigeria, poverty is not going anywhere anytime soon, so the poor must use their conscience and not vote for tentative bags of rice.

Finally, the question is, do Nigerian voters behave rationally or irrationally? A holistic evaluation of the evidence would involve considering voters' rationale when they use different criteria in evaluating the candidates, selecting the best candidate, and voting for him or her.

Based on the objective definition of rationality, Nigerian voters are largely irrational. This is because they tend to vote based on partisanship, ethnicity and immediate pecuniary benefits rather than their evaluation of candidates' performance or capability.

With elections being a crucial aspect of a democratic society, understanding how rational and irrational human beings can be, before and after voting, is vital.