The authors claim that elections rarely produce meaningful policy mandates. Choose an American election and assess the candidates’ positions and the electoral data. In what ways does your case study support the authors’ claims? In what ways, if any, does it challenge or complicate their assumptions?

Analyze how democratic accountability is defined and assessed in Democracy for Realists. What role does this concept play in the authors’ analysis and findings? How does it illuminate some of the text’s key themes and ideas?

Achen and Bartels argue that most voters lack sufficient political knowledge to make informed, policy-driven decisions when voting. What could be done to improve political education in the US, and to what extent could better education address some of the concerns raised in Democracy for Realists?

How do Achen and Bartels reinterpret the New Deal realignment? How do their views compare to the assessments of other political scientists and historians?

Discuss the role of social identities in shaping political behavior. How do group attachments influence voting decisions? What other social factors might be at play that Democracy for Realists does not consider?

Achen and Bartels argue that party identification shapes not only opinions, but also perceptions of political reality. What role do party identification and partisan media currently play in American politics? How does the authors’ analysis intersect with current debates around the problem of increased political polarization?

Consider the authors’ critique of “more democracy” as a solution to political problems. What are some of the strengths and limitations of the solutions they propose as an alternative? What other factors or alternatives may they have overlooked?

Compare and contrast the authors’ skepticism of the idealization of democracy with another work assessing the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy, such as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835). How are the texts different or similar in their view of the average voter and the workings of the electoral system?