In this concluding section, Achen and Bartels convert the book’s earlier criticisms of the viability of certain democratic institutions into a broader critique of the romanticism underlying much democratic theory. Prior to this chapter, Achen and Bartels argued that neither policy-based voting nor retrospective accountability can bear the weight that democratic theorists assign to them. They now shift to exploring what form of democratic theory might remain viable after these unrealistic assumptions are abandoned. They suggest that the failure of citizens to meet democratic ideals is not solely due to citizen incompetence. Instead, many democratic ideals have been developed based on unreasonable assumptions regarding how citizens think, judge, and behave.

Achen and Bartels discuss the transformation of democracy from a system of direct popular control to a system of organized power, reflecting their interest in Group Identity as the Foundation of Political Behavior. If individual voters do not provide clear guidance through coherent preferences, then representation relies on the various groups, parties, and organizations that translate societal interests into political clout. Therefore, their assertion, “If voters are to have their interests represented in the policy-making process, then, interest groups and parties have to do the work” (321), represents the key to their argument. They thus change the focus of assessment from whether elections accurately represent an uncorrupted popular will, to whether the organizational structures that represent society have sufficient political power relative to their presence within society. If politics is comprised of groups, then democracy depends on how well-organized, represented, and listened to those groups are.

The authors argue that elections still perform essential functions, but insist that their uses are different from those traditionally emphasized in democratic mythology. Elections continue to legitimize governments without bloodshed; they establish the expectation that there will be some turnover; they legitimate opposition; and they sometimes implement common values held by large numbers of people. While this approach represents a narrower view of electoral virtues than the folk theory offers, they believe it is nevertheless more durable because it does not assume that elections generally reflect a unified popular will. They suggest that rejecting The Illusion of Electoral Mandates could create a more realistic vocabulary for authorization, alternation, and limited accountability than the traditional vocabulary of mandate. 

The Afterword demonstrates that this realist interpretation remains applicable even under a circumstance that many would treat as unique, bringing their discussion of Misattribution, Randomness, and the Limits of Democratic Accountability to a close. Instead of treating the 2016 presidential election as an event that invalidated all previous interpretations of electoral behavior, Achen and Bartels argue that the election actually conformed to previously established patterns. To them, Trump is an unusual candidate, but they assert that his election illustrates conventional influences: Party loyalty, social identification, and structural electoral patterns. They note that even though “Donald J. Trump was far from being a typical presidential candidate” (338), the distribution of votes in the 2016 presidential election conformed closely to long-established trends. In particular, the Afterword suggests that the tendency to regard 2016 as either a dramatic ideological realignment or an unprecedented democratic message represents similar tendencies toward overinterpretation that the authors have identified throughout the book. Moreover, their examination of the voter allegiances around Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders suggests that group membership remains more influential than specific policy issues, even during an election cycle heavily characterized by ideological rhetoric.

Finally, Chapter 11 returns to an institutional concern that is central to several chapters of the book: The danger of confusing increased direct public involvement with enhanced democratic wisdom. They suggest that Trump’s presidential nomination and Brexit illustrate how plebiscitary mechanisms are similarly susceptible to the misconceptions examined in greater detail elsewhere in the book. The authors do not suggest that participatory methods are inherently illegitimate, but they do believe a that procedural innovations justified by appeals to democratic purity may continue to exacerbate contingency, incomplete information, and rhetorical politics. Regardless of whether voting is conceived as a rational method of controlling politicians, randomness and poor attribution will remain impediments to effective democratic decision-making.

The authors therefore conclude that elections are shaped by identity, mediated by organized groups, and are bound by severe constraints in terms of citizens’ ability to evaluate competing alternatives. The primary analytical contribution of this final section is its refusal to opt for either cynicism or optimism. Achen and Bartels reject neither democracy nor faith in democracy’s classic rationales; instead they argue that democracy can only be defended responsibly once its mythological pretensions have been eliminated and its operational systems for allocating power and authority among representative actors are viewed more realistically.