1 - Introduction

Summary

For most of human history, societies were divided into the rulers and the ruled. Citizens were subjects of their governments and were obligated to obey the orders of their rulers. Enlightenment ideas changed the way that citizens viewed their relationship to government. The view that citizens were subjects of their governments and obligated to serve their governments was reversed, so people increasingly thought that government should serve its citizens rather than the other way around. Democratic political institutions that increasingly were adopted as a result can act as a constraint on those who hold government power, but they also convey legitimacy to the exercise of that power. Democratic political institutions create the illusion that the political elite are accountable to the masses. Meanwhile, the masses, who have an incentive to be rationally ignorant about public policy measures, adopt their public policy views from those offered them by the elite.