Rejoinder to Wittman: True Myths

WITTMAN HAS WRITTEN A CHARACTERISTICALLY ENGAGING response to my critique. While he emphasizes his continued disagreement with me, I am struck by the important concessions he makes. In particular, he has virtually abandoned the rational expectations assumption that drives his trademark results. This retreat has a high price, because his new watered-down standards of rationality are consistent with vast democratic inefficiency. Apparently, democratic failure is not a myth after all. Wittman’s main theoretical effort to salvage his position is to shift a great deal of weight to arguments about discrete choice. While there is a kernel of truth to his approach, it is fairly easy to show that false beliefs about discrete choices are about as dangerous as false beliefs about continuous choices. Furthermore, existing empirical evidence contradicts Wittman’s conjecture.