I did a Bloggingheads debate with Felix Salmon last week, and the New York Times excerpted the only political science relevant bit of our discussion, where we compare the post-Murdoch debate to Ireland after the collapse of the Catholic Church’s moral authority in the early 1990s (me) and the Arab Spring revolutions (Felix). Obviously, these are very different empirical phenomena. But they arguably involve a quite similar mechanism, under which people are unwilling to state their actual preferences (most Irish Catholics had a nuanced relationship to their religion; most Tunisians wanted a different government; most UK Labour politicians, and probably some Conservatives loathed the Murdoch press) because they fear that they will be punished for them. This in turn generates uncertainty among others who share these beliefs, as to whether they are in a minority or a majority – what Timur Kuran calls preference falsification. Such uncertainty can (in the absence of alternative mechanisms for people to signal their beliefs) allow unpopular social orders to persist for quite a long time after their legitimacy has collapsed – but they can also mean that change can happen very rapidly after people have been convinced that the emperor has no clothes (they do not have to change their preferences; only their estimate of the cost associated with expressing those preferences).
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
If only there were a way to gauge people’s preferences for a newspaper, such as how many people purchase it or read it. Nah, better to construct a theory that the readers are unwilling to state their actual preferences.
Love the reference to “preference falsification” in the blog and the idea of perceptual accuracy in the formation of public opinion. Dusting off some other well-worn perspectives, I think there’s an element of pluralistic ignorance/spiral of silence as well. Thanks for bringing those approaches to mind.
Rob – the bit in the post about “most UK Labour politicians, and probably some Conservatives loathed the Murdoch press” might be taken by a careful reader as a wee hint that the population of interest is politicians, not the general public. If you can show convincingly that readership levels in the general public are a good proxy for politicians’ beliefs, then I’d suggest that you don’t waste your insights on a blog comments section – you’ve got a major publication ahead of you my son.
Thanks Henry. I deduced that you were talking about politicians in that sentence, but the conclusion that politicians lie about their preferences to curry favor with those who write about them seemed so trivial that I wrongly concluded you were aiming at a larger point. My apologies.
Rob – your apology is accepted in the spirit in which it was offered.