Citizens often lack formed preferences absent forums for collective deliberation

Evidence

Yet there is insult also in attributing meaning and signifi cance to behavior that individuals themselves may not desire or intend. Because the economists’ methods of identifying preferences necessarily entail subjective moments of interpretation and judgment by the economist himself, this danger is quite real. Moreover, for many pressing policy matters, individual preferences are likely to be non ex is tent or ill formed in the absence of an appropriate forum for discussing and determining social goals. To give just one example, we will not know our preferences with respect to using cloned or transgenic livestock for human consumption unless and until we have a body of relevant experience from which to draw upon in our evaluations. Such experience will only occur with the prior consent of our po liti cal community, whether actively or passively granted. Thus, it makes little sense at present to hinge policies regarding cloned or transgenic livestock on a contrived depiction of our existing wants. What seems required instead is some mechanism for discussing what it is that we want to want. Questions of that nature depend not on costbenefi t balancing, but on the will of a community to conceive of and to realize a transformation of culture toward some shared ideal. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 313

Categorization

• XREF: We don’t know what we want to want’ echoes the polyad’s deliberation/listening methods and Ambedkar’s critique of externally-dictated moral rules. — connects to: Collective values arise through institutions, not from atomized preference sums — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 312; Most citizens form opinions on isolated issues without linking them ideologically — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1958; Group-interest voters lack the contextual grasp to respond ideologically without elite guidance (+5 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how regulatory method invented preferences that never existed — the economists’ act of conjuring wants for cloned livestock as manufactured consent.

Broader Connections

• Most citizens form opinions on isolated issues without linking them ideologically #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1958
• Many voters cannot connect social groups to expected party preferences #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1931
• Democratic elections legitimize only as outcomes of prior public deliberation, not preference aggregation #expands (0.78) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 94
• Group-interest voters lack the contextual grasp to respond ideologically without elite guidance #qualifies (0.75)
• A folk theory that talk changes nothing underwrites civic apathy in volunteer groups #corroborates (0.72) — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 93
• The belief that talk matters is a precondition of participatory democracy #corroborates (0.72) — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 138
• People’s abstract political principles often fail to match their concrete policy preferences #corroborates (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3748