… is from page 20 of Christopher Achen’s and Larry Bartels’s 2016 book, Democracy for Realists:
The history of political thought – including much contemporary political science – is marked by an addiction to romantic theories.
DBx: Indeed so. And yet countless are the economists even today who, with their eyes peeled for every possible deviation of real-world markets from textbook ideals, are blind not only to possible ways in which government might fail but also to the many actual ways in which government makes matters worse.
