Friends,

I hope you’ll listen to my conversation with fellow political scientist and political behavior expert David Moscrop. In addition to his impressive scholarly research, Dr. Moscrop has also written a very accessible book that explains why humans are poorly-suited for democracy.

Titled Too Dumb For Democracy? Why we make bad political decisions and how we can better ones documents the limits of human decision-making, noting in particular how decision-making deficiencies are particularly pronounced in the political context which us political scientists understand as perpetual contests for power and resources.

Now, because David is in Canada I used this opportunity to not only highlight this insightful and important research into our mental and psychological limits for fair, equitable, and healthy self-governance, but also to emphasize how determinative a country’s institutional design, rules, and regulations are for conditioning human democratic behavior.

In places like Canada, where the political institutional structures, rules, and regulations rein in ideology, hyperpartisanship, and “tribalism” democracy is far healthier.

Our political institutional structures, rules, and regulations do the opposite, setting us up for failure.

Enjoy!

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