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An Expressive Voting Model ofAnger, Hatred, Harm, and Shame

Dwight R. Lee1

Abstract: To consider some political implications of angry voters, I alter the standard expressive model in a fundamental way. One result is that an angry voter with a strong sense of shame at the thought of voting to harm others, may still do so, even when the harm is brutal. Indeed, his willingness to vote for harming others may increase if the proposed harm is increased. It will also be argued that the model is based on angry voters who are more “decent” (less willing to harm others) than most of us occasionally are. Several examples are given that are consistent with the most troubling implications of the model. The paper concludes with the importance of augmenting the weak protection that voters impose on government excesses with constitutional constraints on the political process.

Keywords: Expressive voting, Anger, Hatred, Shame, Harm, Voting cascades, Cognitive dissonance. Trump, Duterte, Criminal sentences, Slavery, Hitler, Constitutions

JEL Classification: D72

Dwight R. Leeleed@smu.edu

1 Senior Fellow, O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom, Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, 6212 Bishop Blvd., Dallas, TX 75275, USA.

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An Expressive Voting Model of Anger, Hatred, Harm, and Shame

byDwight R. Lee

1. Introduction

We are all capable of anger and hatred that provokes a desire to harm others.

In most cases this desire is sufficiently restrained by criminal punishment, social

sanctions, and feelings of shame to prevent the harm. The premise of this paper is

that it is only shame that moderates the desire to express anger and hatred by

voting to inflict harm, sometimes serious harm, on others. The analysis is based on

the literature on what is known as expressive voting, which begins with the

observation that the probability an individual vote will be decisive—i.e.,

determines the election’s outcome—of a high-turnout election is miniscule. The

immediate implication of this observation is that a voter’s influence on an

election’s outcome is far less important to him than how his vote makes him feel

emotionally.2

Voting decisions are obviously affected by anger and hatred. These emotions

are related to a natural tendency for people to stereotype others as members of

groups, often amorphous, such as the rich, the elite, the privileged, criminals,

foreigners, illegal immigrants, Democrats, Republicans, bureaucrats, or welfare

recipients. Often trivial distinctions between members of different groups can

inflame anger and hatred between them even though those animosities commonly

dissipate between individuals from hostile groups when they personally interact

2 See Brennan and Lomasky (1993) for the most definitive analysis and application of expressive voting. For the first explicit application of expressive voting see Tullock (1971), although he didn’t use the term expressive voting. The term may have been used first by Brennan and Lomasky (1993), although, in response to a question by the author of this paper, Brennan wrote he is not sure that is true. More recent treatments of expressive voting include Caplan (2007), Brennan (2008), Lee and Clark (2014), and Clark and Lee (2016).

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and discover they are remarkably alike in ways that really matter. Unfortunately,

politicians can increase their electoral support by inciting anger and hate in their

supporters and potential supporters toward particular groups and proposing policies

to seriously harm them. Fortunately, voters who are angry enough to consider

voting to harm commonly experience a sense of shame at the thought of casting

such a vote. Without such shame, there is little, if anything, to discourage an angry

voter from voting to harm a hated group since there are no laws against doing so.

Thus, the likelihood of atrocities being committed by democratic government

depends, at least in part, on the opposing influences of anger and shame at the

polls. With this in mind, I develop an expressive voter model of anger, harm, and

shame.3

Many government policies are contentious because they benefit some and

harm others. This paper is not concerned with most of them. So, let me indicate

briefly the type of policies and the characteristics of the voters being considered.

The policies threaten to inflict harm on a group of men, women, and children that

is so serious that most people will, after emotions have cooled, recognize them as

evil. This is not true of most of the policies labeled as evil by some interest group.

To counter the comforting view that broad voter support to inflict horrible harm

requires evil voters, I consider only voters who, though angry enough to receive

emotional satisfaction from voting for such a policy, are decent enough to

experience a deep and persistent sense of shame at the thought of voting for others

to be seriously harmed. As will be discussed, this assumes more decency than

many, maybe most, are sure of being capable of when voting under the influence

of anger, particularly when augmented by a strong sense of morality.

Those familiar with expressive voting models may question if any insights

can be generated by such a model of angry voters that aren’t obvious from the

3 Most of the time I will drop the use of hatred when clear that anger is based on hatred.

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standard model. By the standard expressive voting model, I mean one that

considers a benevolent voter who achieves emotional gratification from voting for

a public policy to help others with a vote that has a probability of being decisive

(henceforth denoted by P) of effectively zero. It might seem that this model, with

obvious modification, would apply equally well to the case of the angry voter

voting to harm others. In both cases, one could easily assume that when P is

effectively zero that it eliminates the voter’s concern about the consequences of his

vote.4 While this is true in the standard model of a benevolent voter, it is not true of

the angry voter model developed here.

There is a fundamental difference between the standard model and the angry

model in terms of how P affects the voter’s cost and benefits. In the standard

model, the personal satisfaction derived by voting (commonly referred to as an

expressive element) is exogenously given, and thus not influenced by P. The

expected personal cost of casting a vote (commonly referred to as an instrumental

element) is strictly determined by P in a way that has been elevated to the status of

a proposition by Brennan and Lomasky (1993, p. 24). With some minor

rearrangement of wording, their Proposition 2 states “all other things equal, the

relative significance of expressive elements increases relative to the instrumental

benefits foregone, [or the expected personal cost of expressive benefits], by a

factor equal to the inverse of the probability of being decisive.” In other words, the

expressive satisfaction of voting for a policy is not affected by P, but the voter’s

expected cost for the satisfaction is equal to the product P×C, where C is the

increase in his taxes if the policy receives a majority vote. In the expressive voter

model of the angry voter, both the personal benefit (expressing anger) and personal

4 Voting to harm others has been discussed occasionally in the expressive-voting literature. See Brennan and Lomasky (1993, pp. 48-49, 174, 217 and 221). But I am aware of little analysis of voting to harm others that goes beyond an intuitive discussion, which concludes that in large turnout elections, the personal satisfaction from voting for harming others is not offset by any sense of responsibility for the harm.

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cost (experiencing shame) of casting a vote are expressive elements, which are

influenced by P.5 Furthermore, there is no clear relationship between P and the

satisfaction of expressing anger or the cost of the shame experienced when casting

a vote to harm others. Indeed, the only instrumental element, as defined by

Brennan and Lomasky, is the harm inflicted, which is an exogenous parameter in

the angry voter model, so Proposition 2 is irrelevant. As shall be seen, this

irrelevance expands the range of possibilities derived by the angry voter model

relative to those derived by the standard model.

The model is developed and discussed in Section 2. It is based on a voter’s

utility function of the anger and shame he experiences (both of which are

themselves are functions of P and the amount of harm) when voting to impose

harm on others. The model is illustrated in a diagram based on plausible

assumptions consistent with a decent voter, as described above. In Section 3, I

justify the plausibility of the assumptions embodied in the diagram, and then

discuss why people are not always as decent as they believe they are because of the

ease by which humans can be convinced that morality justifies condoning truly

atrocious violence. I also argue that the angry voter model is not subject to a

troubling contradiction that is inherent in the standard model of expressive voting,

but which as far as I know has been ignored in the literature. I begin Section 4 by

discussing the difficulty of empirically testing the implications of expressive

voting models, and commenting on the problem with a conceptual test of those

models considered by Brennan and Lomasky (1993, pp. 117-120). I then establish

that the model implies the possibility that increasing the harm a policy would

inflict on others makes it more attractive for some to vote for the policy. This leads

to Section 5 in which four examples are discussed that suggest that policies or

5 Any expected financial cost the angry voter faces in terms of higher taxes to inflict the harm is ignored, with one exception in Section 3, since it will become effectively zero as P approaches zero, as it is in the standard expressive-voting model.

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candidates are more popular when they propose to inflict more harm on a targeted

group. Section 6 offers concluding comments on the advantage of constitutional

democracies when it comes to providing their citizens protection against the most

extreme cases of voter-sanctioned political violence.

2. The model

The expressive utility the angry voter realizes from voting for harming a

group is given by

U(A(α, H), S(α, H)) (1)

where

α = 1- P, so α increases from 0 to arbitrarily close to 1 as P decreases from 1 to

arbitrarily close to 0;6 H is a measure of the harm to be inflicted on the targeted

group; A is a function that gives the anger alleviated by voting to inflict the harm;

and S is a function that gives the shame the voter experiences from voting for the

harm; with

U1 (A(α, H), S(α, H)) > 0 (2)

U2 (A(α, H), S(α, H)) < 0 (3)

A1(α, H) < 0 (4)

S1(α, H) < 0 (5)

A2(α, H) > 0 (6)

S2(α, H)) > 0 (7)

6 This simplifies the discussion when considering the sign on the effect of reducing P since the derivative with respect to P directly indicates the sign on the effect of increasing P.

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The signs on the partials in (2)-(7) are based on the realistic assumptions that (2)

increasing the anger alleviated (getting it off his chest) increases the utility he

receives from voting to harm the objects of his anger; (3) increasing the shame he

experiences from his vote reduces his utility; (4) a reduction in P (an increase in α)

reduces the amount of anger alleviated by reducing the voter’s sense of

responsibility for the harm inflicted; (5) a reduction in P reduces his shame, again

by reducing his responsibility for the harm inflicted; (6) an increase in the harm

increases the anger alleviated by voting to inflict it; and (7) an increase in the harm

increases the shame experienced by voting to inflict it.

As opposed to a standard utility function, the voter has no control over the

variables in (1). He sees those variables as parameters, and simply responds to the

utility they create with his voting decision. A change in those parameters that

increases a voter’s utility may have no effect on how he votes since his utility may

already be positive, or was negative before and remains negative afterward. All

that can be said is that a voter is more likely to vote for the policy if his utility from

doing so increases.7 I begin by considering what happens to (1) as α increases from

0 to arbitrarily close to 1 (or as P declines from 1 to effectively 0), assuming H

remains constant.

Differentiating (1) through with respect to α yields

dU/dα = U1A1 + U2S1 (8)

Since U1A1 is negative and U2S1 is positive, without some assumptions on the

magnitude of U1A1 and U2S1 the sign on (8) is indeterminate. Indeed, under

plausible assumptions the sign on (8) can be positive or negative.

7 For convenience of expositive, I shall assume that the voter is voting directly on the policy. In this case, if his utility in 1) is positive he will vote for the policy and if 1) is negative he will vote against it. Although fully aware that women vote, I use the male pronoun throughout.

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In Figure 1, however, I construct a diagram based on (8) that embodies

plausible assumptions that are consistent with the shame of the decent voter

described in the introduction.8 The negatively-sloped curve in the upper quadrant

(denoted by anger utility) gives the voter’s positive utility from anger alleviation

by voting for the policy as P declines (α increases). As constructed, the rate of

decline in anger utility become smaller as P declines, with the anger utility from

voting to harm others remaining noticeably positive as P approaches 0. The

positive-sloped curve in the lower quadrant (denoted by shame disutility) gives the

voter’s negative utility from the shame of voting to harm others as P declines. As

constructed, the rate at which this curve increases (shame-utility becomes less

negative) until the shame disutility starts leveling off at a negative level of utility

as P approaches zero.9 Summing the two curves vertically yields the total utility

from voting for the policy as a function of α = (1-P). As shown, although the

shame utility remains negative when P is effectively zero, the total utility has

become positive, and the voter votes for the policy.

Figure 1 clearly illustrates only one of the general possibilities of the model;

one that is consistent with the harm being serious and the voter being angry but

decent, as defined in the Introduction. Obviously, there are plausible shapes and

positives of the curves that reflects the voting of voters who are more decent, as

many think they are (who believe they would never vote for such a policy), or far

less decent (who would vote for the policy even if P equaled 1).

8 The plausibility of those assumptions is discussed in Section 3. In Figure 1, the horizontal axis along which α is measured is broken from .80 to .95, with the scale being enlarged over that last .05 units. It is plausible to assume that anger and shame have independent effects on the voter’s utility, with the zero cross partials U1,2 = U2,1 = 0. But nothing fundamental changes in Figure 1 if there is a small interaction between the effects of A and S on the voter’s utility as α increases.9 As P approaches zero, the sense of responsibility effectively declines to zero, but not the shame, as is discussed in Section 3.

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In the next section, I justify the reasonableness for the general shape of the

curves in Figure 1, and then discuss how these curves are affected by

considerations that influence everyone’s behavior; occasionally in ways that few

people want to believe apply to them.

Figure 1

3. Voting cascades, morally motivated evil, and cognitive dissonance

The assumption is certainly reasonable that the anger utility curve slopes

downward with a declining sense of responsibility for the harm voted for as P

decreases. Notice, however, that this curve almost completely flattens out, and

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remains above zero, even when P has declined to a level that renders a vote

instrumentally impotent, as shown in Figure 1. This is reasonable given that people

can receive positive utility from expressing acts of anger that have no instrumental

effect—think of swearing at political commentary on TV or joining a protest for a

lost cause. Surely, we can expect the utility from expressing anger with a vote to

remain positive even if the vote is instrumentally insignificant; i.e., there is no

sense of responsibility for any consequences. Considering shame, it is also

reasonable to expect shame to decline as P declines, with any sense of

responsibility for harming others being eliminated as P becomes miniscule. But

people can feel shame for an action that they know has no effect on anything; e.g.,

having a negative thought about someone you love. So, eliminating a sense of

responsibility is not the same as eliminating shame, which explain why a shame

disutility curve that slopes up but remains negative over the entire range of P, as

shown in Figure 1, is plausible.

It is important to recognize that the above curves are affected by social

influences that are constantly impacting our beliefs and behavior—including our

voting decisions—most of the time in rather benign ways. For example, if an angry

voter is part of a social network containing large numbers who are sympathetic to

his anger and voting to harm others, this will generally be reflected in his anger

utility curve being higher for all P than otherwise. Similarly, if those in the voter’s

network indicate little shame about the willingness to vote for such a policy, his

shame disutility curve will tend to be higher (less negative). This network effect

provides an important explanation for clusters of voters who vote the same way.

This social network effect can generate voting cascades as described by Christakis

and Fowler (2011, pp. 186-187):

In some cases, one person’s vote spreads like wildfire, setting off a

cascade of up to one hundred other voters, even though people

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typically, [are] directly connected to only three or four other people.

On average, one decision to vote would motivate about three other

people to go to the polls. Moreover, because liberals tend to associate

with liberals and conservatives with conservatives, these [voting]

cascades yield sizable increases in the number of people voting the

same way.10

This statement might exaggerate the effect of one vote, but it doesn’t exaggerate

the potential of social network effects to spread anger and hatred that leads to

horrifying treatment of a despised group by leaving large numbers of individuals

without a sense of shame for the consequences of their collective actions, such as

voting. Obviously when this happens, the curves in Figure 1 no longer apply and

large numbers of voters cease to satisfy the requirements of even minimum

decency.

Interestingly, Steven Picker (2011) has marshaled a tremendous amount of

evidence indicating that, despite the impression we get from instant news of world-

wide horrors, the world has become less violent over the last few centuries, with

the 20th century being the least violent in human history. That’s the good news.

Somewhat disappointingly, Pinker does not think this good news is the result of

improvement in our morals. He clearly acknowledges the existence of what

Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature,” and recognizes that they

are doing a better job restraining the evil impulses of our moral senses with the

critical help of institutional constraints on political violence, more benign social

network effects, and the expansion of social cooperation through global markets.

The bad news, however, is that our evil moral impulses are still lurking in us, ready

10 The authors express concern that we can become more polarized when people connect primarily with others of similarly ideologies, but more favorably they see this as motivating more people to vote.

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to take advantage of the occasional emergence of horribly perverse social network

effects, or as Pinker (2011, p. 570) states:

[p]eople can not only overcome their revulsion to hands-on violence

but acquire a taste for it; … And people can avow [including vote for]

a belief they don’t hold because they think everyone else avows it;

such beliefs can sweep through a closed society and bring it under the

spell of a collective delusion.11

Those collective delusions can lead to reprehensible violence being condoned by

otherwise decent people who are motivated by moral passions. Again, quoting

Pinker (2011, 622): “[t]he human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds

of those who commit it [and vote for it], and it furnishes them with motives for

violence that bring them no tangible benefits.”

When these conditions arise and convince large numbers of people of the

moral virtue of committing atrocities against a given group, the unfortunate

consequence can be illustrated with shifts in the anger utility and shame disutility

curves in Figure 1. Obviously, the anger utility curve shifts upward for all P.

Indeed, it might under these conditions be better labeled the “moral anger” utility

curve. With morality and anger reinforcing each other, the upward shift of the

anger utility in Figure 1 is likely to be large. And the effect of that upward shift is

likely to be increased as any shame the angry voter would otherwise experience,

along with the shame disutility curve, is eliminated completely. Without the cost of

shame in the angry voter model, the only expected personal cost the voter might

consider is his expected tax cost of inflicting the harm, which has not been

considered in the formal model (recall footnote 4). An interesting question is how

much the expected tax cost discourages a morally angry voter from voting to harm

11 Interestingly, Pinker ties in these comments on violence to the search for “perfect justice” as a source of revenge and strife.

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others when compared to how much it discourages the morally benevolent voter

from voting to help others. The best measure of this reluctance is the range of P

from 0 to X (where X ≤ 1) over which the two voters would vote yes, given that

each face the same expected tax cost. This is obviously a difficult empirical

question, but I would bet on the average X being higher for the morally angry voter

than for the morally benevolent voter—the morally angry voter without shame

would be less deterred from voting to harm a hated group by the expected financial

cost than the morally benevolent voter would be deterred from voting to help a

deserving group by the same expected financial cost.12

There is another difference worth mentioning between the two expressive

voter models discussed here; a difference dealing with cognitive dissonance.

Without it being mentioned in previous work, at least none that I am aware of, the

standard model contains what would be a serious cognitive dissonance without the

benevolent voter ignoring a blatant contradiction. As the model is presented: the

voter is motivated to vote for an expensive government program because it gives

him moral satisfaction at effectively no cost, with most of that satisfaction

depending on him ignoring the fact that his vote cost him effectively nothing. Of

course, maybe this blatant contradiction is being ignored by large numbers of

“benevolent” voters, but the necessity of this obliviousness being required by the

model should at least be acknowledged13 I acknowledge that cognitive dissonance

can play a role in the model of an angry voter because of the conflict between the

voter’s desire to vote for harming others and his desire to think of himself as a 12 One can debate whether hate or love is the strongest motivator. As a political motivator, however, hate has the advantage of scaling far better than love. We can quickly develop an intense hate for a large group of people, indeed an entire nation of them. Our ability to intensely love others enough to make significant sacrifices for them requires more time and is limited to a relative few.13 Interestingly, the first use of what would later be termed expressive voting was in an article by Gordon Tullock (1971) in which he argued that voting for government charity is a way for a voter to reduce the cognitive dissonance resulting from the gap in how much he feels he should give to charity and how much he does give. Yet Tullock fails to point out that voting would do little to reduce his (Tullock’s) cognitive dissonance unless he (the voter) also eliminates mine.

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decent person. But this cognitive dissonance is either internalized in the shame he

experiences when voting, or the lack of shame indicates the lack of any cognitive

dissonance. Of course, the human brain is fully capable of believing the

preposterous and ignoring the obvious, as indicated earlier in this section. Perhaps

that is all that needs to be said about cognitive dissonance in general.

The considerations discussed in this section have the effect of increasing the

likelihood that the angry voter will vote to harm others even though P is clearly

greater than zero, as shown in Figure 1. This is particularly true of the influence of

social network effects which can convert an angry voter’s sense of shame into a

sense of moral virtue when considering a vote to harm others. While the possibility

of such effects from social networks are important when examining the role anger,

hatred, and shame play in voting decisions, I ruled them out in the introduction,

and formal analysis by limiting the analysis to decent voters, as described in the

Introduction. Key to that decency is that the voter’s sense of shame remains clearly

positive when voting to harm others, no matter how close P is to zero. I continue to

ignore the influence of the most troubling effects of social network effects in the

formal analysis in the next section to emphasize that decent voters without the

influence of perverse social network effects can vote in ways that most are

reluctant to admit apply to their voting decisions. I begin the section by

considering the difficulty of testing convincingly the implications of expressive

voting models, whether they feature benevolent voters or angry voters.

4. More harm means more enthusiastic voters

Models based on expressive voting are difficult to test, and the model

developed here is no exception. The only empirical test of the standard model that

Brennan and Lomasky (1993, pp. 117-120) mention makes use of the implication

of Proposition 2; i.e., the smaller P is, the larger the benevolent voter’s expressive

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benefit is relative to his instrument cost. Mathematically it always follows that as

the expected outcome of a large-turnout election converges on a tie vote there is a

“truly astronomical” increase in P. Based on this, Brennan and Lomasky suggest

that if voters were attracted to the polls primarily because of the instrumental value

of their vote, there would be a far higher turnout rate in elections expected to be

extremely close than those expected to result in a landslide victory. From this they

conclude (p. 119) “the fact that increases in expected closeness do not have a

spectacular positive effect on voter turnout comes about as close as one can in this

muddy life to a decisive rejection of the instrumental voter hypothesis.” Their

empirically-based observation on the relatively modest turnout increases in close

elections does provide a nod in favor of expressive voting, but not for the reason

they suggest.

The problem with the Brennan and Lomasky argument concerns the

importance of the difference between PT (the probability of a decisive vote when

the election is expected to be a tie) and PL (the probability of a decisive vote when

the election is expected to generate even a modest “landslide”). It is true that this

difference is huge when measured by the ratio PT/ PL, but it is trivial when

measured by the ratio (1-PT)/(1-PL), the ratios of the probabilities that a vote will

not be decisive. No matter how large PT/ PL is (and without meaningful distortion it

can be represented as infinite), findings by Kahneman and Tversky, and reported in

Kahneman (2011, p. 315-16), indicate that voters will respond to both PC and PL as

if they are indistinguishable from zero, and thus a “truly astronomical” increase in

P can be expected to have no noticeable effect on voter turnout regardless of

whether voters are motivated by instrumental or expressive reasons.14 The most 14 Kahneman and Tyersky find when making decisions, low probabilities (those less than 1%), except when considering highly emotional and/or frightening events, tend to be “ignored altogether, effectively assigning a decision weight of zero. . . . [and] people are almost completely insensitive to variations of risks among small probabilities.” Assuming an election with 200,001 voters, with the probability 50% that each voter will vote for or against a policy, the probability of a tie vote is slightly less than 18/100th of 1%, as determined by probabilities given in Brennan and Lomasky (1993, Table 4.1 on p. 57). An average congressional district has around 500,000

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plausible explanation for a somewhat larger turnout in a close election than a

lopsided one is that the former generates more interest, and therefore more

expressive satisfaction, when voting in it.

Another possibility for obtaining support for an expressive voting model is

by modifying the model to make the policy more attractive expressively to some

voters, and less so to other voters, and see if this appears to be reflected in voting

patterns.15 The only parameter in the angry voter model is harm (given by H)

which is the only instrumental element in the model and directly affects the

expressive elements in the model—the satisfaction of expressing anger and the

shame experienced from doing so. A voter who receives positive utility from

voting for the policy at the initial H may find voting for the policy more attractive

if H is increased, but he may also find it less attractive.16 On the other hand, an

increase in H can be expected to increase the unattractiveness of the policy to a

voter who is not angry at those targeted for harm, and has no desire to harm them,

and is not going to vote for the policy regardless of the harm.

The effect of an increase in H to increase an angry voter’s expressive utility

from voting to inflict harm on others is obtained by differentiating (1) with respect

to H, assuming P is fixed at a value very close to zero, as is standard in expressive

voting models. The necessary and sufficient condition for an increase in H to

increase the angry voter’s utility is

dU/dH = U1A2 + U2S2 > 0 (9)

registered voters. Also, knowing that every voter has a 50 percent probability implies a higher probability of a tie vote than does a poll that predicts a tie vote based on a typical sample of likely voters.15 This has been done by Clark and Lee (2016) by modifying the standard model of the benevolent voter by allowing the voter’s tax cost for the noble policy, assuming it receives as majority vote, to influence the voter’s utility from voting for the policy.16 It is possible, though not particularly likely, that a voter who would experience negative expressive utility voting to harm those in the targeted group, could experience a sufficient increase in expressive utility if H is increased to shift his no vote to a yes vote. Of course, and probably more likely, a voter whose utility from voting for the policy at the initial H is positive might continue to vote for the policy even if the increase in H reduces his utility from doing so.

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It follows from conditions (2) and (6) that the first term on the right-hand side is

positive, and from conditions (3) and (7) that the second term is negative. In other

words, an increase in H increases the voter’s utility from additional anger

alleviation by more than it reduces his utility from additional shame when

condition (9) is satisfied.

In the next section I consider some examples suggesting that some voters are

more enthusiastic in their vote for policies and/or candidates the more harm they

propose to inflict on a despised group. The most convincing evidence for such

enthusiasm often comes from the number who vote in favor (commonly out of

anger) of inflicting serious harm on others. As mentioned, however, a policy or

candidate can generate great enthusiasm (utility) in some voters without receiving

many votes. Also, for reasons discussed in Section 3, some voters who are

enthusiastic in their support of harming others have discarded any sense of shame

by convincing themselves of the moral virtue of that support, and some of the

voters in the examples that follow have surely done so. Just as surely, however,

some of them are decent voters, as described earlier, and thus experienced some

shame in the voting booth. Even though anger and shame and the utility they

generate when voting cannot be measured, the following examples seem consistent

with the implications discussed above.

5. Overcoming shame with harm and hatred

Angry voters for Trump

Americans heard a lot about angry voters and hatred during the 2016

presidential campaign, and most of the time it was being used to describe those

voting for Donald Trump. Trump supporters weren’t the only voters motivated by

anger and hatred, but many of them were. For example, most Americans hate

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terrorists, Islamic or otherwise, even though it is doubtful that many of them would

have the families of terrorists killed if they had the authority to do so. Yet many of

them voted for Trump partly because he proposed to do just that if elected

President. Similarly, no doubt some voters would, given the authority, deport all

undocumented residents, including millions of productive, law abiding residents

and their families with children who are American citizens, but not nearly as many

who voted for Trump because he promised he would. Yet, who can doubt that

many who voted for Trump would have done so with less enthusiasm, if they

would have voted for him at all, had he proposed only to investigate the danger

posed by family members of terrorists, or promised to increase the budget of the

U.S. Border Patrol. The argument is not that all Trump voters who favored

imposing serious harm on innocent men, women, and children had to overcome

their shame to cast their vote. Surely many did not. There is evidence, however,

that live-interview polls underestimated Trump’s vote because some were ashamed

to admit they were going to vote for him.17

Angry voters in the Philippines

Violent crime and corruption are serious social and economic problems in

the Philippines, with much of it the result of drug cartels in league with corrupt and

incompetent politicians. Since the overthrow of the Ferdinand Marcos regime in

1986, Philippine politicians have been winning elections by promising to, among

other things, destroy the drug cartels, reduce crime and clean up the political

process. But the promises were seldom followed by effective action. Cartel leaders

occasionally went to jail, but they often continued to operate (sometimes with the

blessing of leading politicians),18 with the crime and corruption continuing, and

17 See http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-embarrassment-of-supporting-donald-trump/421365/18 Philippine Senator Leila de Lima, and former Secretary of the Philippine Department of Justice has been accused by President Duterte of remaining in contact with the head of a drug cartel while serving time inside the New Bilibid Prison, and receiving drug money from narco traders. She was indicted on a related charge in December 21, 2016 by

19

Philippine citizens becoming increasingly angry at politicians, politically

influential elites, and criminals. The evidence of this anger became apparent when

citizens had the opportunity to express themselves in the 2016 Philippine

presidential elections by voting for the candidacy of Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte was

the mayor of Davao City on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and had a

reputation for being tough on crime and corruption and didn’t mind criticizing

prominent politicians in colorful terms. Given this background, his promises to

crack down on corrupt politicians and to have the police kill on sight drug dealers

and other criminals were credible; exciting enthusiasm in a large segment of the

public while appalling many others (particularly the political elite) more

comfortable with the status quo. Duterte won with a plurality of 39 percent in a

five-candidate race. It’s doubtful that a noticeable number of his supporters were

any more prone to personal violence than most people. It’s also doubtful that

nearly as many would have voted for him, or with the same enthusiasm, had he not

credibly promised to inflict serious harm on groups subject to widespread anger

and hatred. And credible he seems to be. Within six months of Duterte assuming

the presidency on July 1, 2016, there were reports that more than 5,000 drug

dealers and criminals had been killed by the police and unknown vigilantes with

Duterte’s blessing, who himself claimed to have personally killed drug dealers as

mayor of Davao City.19 Clearly not all of those who voted for Duterte experienced

shame as they cast their votes, but it would be hard to believe that none of them

had to overcome some of their shame with their anger before casting their votes.

Anger now, shame later

the Philippine Department of Justice. See http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/philippines-justice-department-files-criminal-case-against-duterte-critic-senator-leila-de-lima-1597536, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_de_Lima19 See http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/01/01/1658519/join-fight-vs-drugs-corruption-duterte, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-personally-killed-criminals, and http://time.com/4478954/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-vigilante-killing-deaths/

20

Sometimes the dominance of anger in one election may obscure all but a

shadow of the shame that afterwards becomes vivid enough to call for, and

influence, another election to repeal the first. Consider angry voters and

California’s Three Strikes referendum which passed with 72 percent of the state-

wide vote in the spring of 1994. In addition to angry voters, the relevant elements

driving this vote was the senseless murder of Kimber Reynolds, a beautiful young

college student, by two crystal meth addicts with long rap sheets, and the grieving

and politically savvy father of the victim whose effort got the referendum on the

ballot. Briefly stated, Three Strikes proposed to double the length of the prison

sentence for a second serious crime over what it was before, and to require a

sentence for the third offense, which could be for a minor crime, of 25 years to

life.20 Only a small percentage of proposed referenda make it to the California

voters, and of those very few pass as impressively as did the Three Strikes

referendum. The popularity of the referendum was clearly increased by the violent

crime rate in California (which had been extraordinary high in the years before

1994), the frustration of angry voters, and the public outrage caused by Kimber’s

murder. Just as clearly, the attention-getting increase in the severity of punishment

also increased the enthusiasm and number of those who voted for Three Strikes.

But the anger of voters can diminish and shame for their votes can increase.

There were reasons for voters to reconsider Three Strikes. Penalties for crimes can

be too low to achieve reasonable deterrence. But they can also be too high. Ideally,

the pattern of penalties should roughly “fit the crimes,” both as a matter of justice,

and as an effective means of deterring crimes. If the penalty for shoplifting, for

example, is the same as that for armed robbery, then there is no deterrent (except

for a probability difference in being caught) against shoplifters switching to armed

robbery. It’s true that the rate of homicides, rapes, assaults, burglaries, and auto

20 See Gladwell (2013, p. 236). Most of the information in this subsection is from Chapter 8 of Gladwell’s book.

21

thefts all dropped impressively after Three Strikes went into effect. But there are

several qualifications to this fact as a measure of the benefits from Three Strikes.

First, the California crime rate started declining before the Three Strikes

referendum was passed, and crime rates were falling at the same time throughout

the country, even in states and municipalities with no increase in criminal

penalties. Second, while some studies concluded that Three Strikes lowered

crimes; most concluded that it had no effect; a few concluded it increased crimes;

and one study found it reduced crime generally, but increased the number of

violent crimes (consistent with the argument that increasing the penalty for

nonviolent crimes reduces the penalty for violent crimes). Third, the prison

population increased rapidly with those convicted of nonviolent crimes (including

possession of drugs that were unevenly enforced), along with the fact that the age

of more prisoners made them less likely to commit crimes, especially violent

crimes.21 In response to these qualifications another referendum was presented to

California voters in November 2012 that significantly reduced the sentences

imposed by Three Strikes and allowed those serving life sentences to appeal if their

third conviction was for relatively minor crimes. The referendum passed with 68.6

percent of the vote, a reflection that the anger of California voters had moderated,

along with an increase in the delayed shame that many voters felt for their vote for

Three Strikes.

Defending slavery with anger and hatred, assisted by a strong sense of righteousness22

For over three decades after the Constitution was ratified, slavery was

widely acknowledged, even in the south, to be an evil that would be phased out.

The founders, many of whom owned slaves, acknowledged the immorality of

21 Gladwell (2013, Chapter 8) adds to and expands on these qualifications.22 I have relied on Grynaviski and Munger (forthcoming) for most of information in this subsection on the changing attitudes toward slavery, particularly in the South.

22

slavery and its inconsistency with the ideals expressed in the Declaration of

Independence. Well into the 1820s there were southerners, primarily among the

upper class, who openly discussed slavery as a necessary evil. The problem,

particularly in the southern states, was the prevailing view that immediate

emancipation was impractical. But as the abolitionist movement in the north

became more aggressive during the 1820s, the views in the south began shifting

from slavery being a necessary evil to being a morally sanctified arrangement. This

was a spontaneous and widespread shift, based on the arguments of a few

influential southern writers that Blacks were better off as slaves in America than

Blacks left behind in the uncivilized conditions of Africa, and even better off than

free workers in the north. These arguments wiped out a lot of shame in the south

by convincing white southerners that they were making Blacks better off by

enslaving them. Recall the discussion in Section 3 on the ability of our sense of

morality to excuse any atrocity when enough of our neighbors are convinced of its

moral justification.

But how does this example fit in with the model of anger and hatred

motivating people to vote for harming others? For the most part, southerners

weren’t angry at Blacks and didn’t hate them. As stated by Glaeser (2005, p. 66)

“[p]rior to the Civil War, the usual Southern stereotype was that Blacks were

inferior but not evil.”23 It is true that, leading up to the Civil War, anger and hatred

were motivating the clear majority of southern voters to favor harming slaves by

keeping them in captivity indefinitely, with a delusional sense of righteousness

obliterating any sense of shame they should have experienced. But the anger and

hatred was directed at northerners, not their slaves. The shift in southern attitudes

23 Obviously, there have been periods of white anger and hatred toward Blacks in the south, as discussed by Glaeser (2005, pp. 66-71). Interestingly, this anger and hate was less when there was “little difference in the policies of the [two major political] parties policies toward [Blacks]” which happened when neither party was concerned about blatant violations of the civil rights of Blacks. When both parties “endorsed Jim Crow policies, there was no party that supported African-Americans, so the incentive to supply anti-Black hatred disappeared.” (p. 70).

23

toward slavery and anger was given impetus in 1835 by the Postal Campaign of the

American Antislavery Society (AAS). Apparently, believing there was more

opposition to slavery in the south than existed, the AAS attempted to promote this

opposition by flooding southern post offices with an overwhelming number of

strongly-worded pamphlets. But instead of seeing the pamphlets as an opportunity

to celebrate diverse opinions, southerners responded by publicly burning the

pamphlets, passing laws against anti-slavery literature, and despising northerners

for interfering in southern affairs. Throughout the south, except for some

mountainous regions, no politician could get elected by advocating a program of

gradually eliminating slavery. The only politically viable position was the one that

imposed the most harm on Blacks—slavery now and slavery forever. The north

was hated and southern Blacks were harmed. Politics doesn’t always do a good job

targeting the harmful consequences of voters’ anger and hatred where the voters

intend. But, as the previous examples in this section indicate, the more harmful the

consequences of a policy motivated by anger and hatred, the more enthusiastically

supporters of the policy are likely to vote for it.

Other examples could be given that are consistent with the implication that

the inequality (9) holds in situations in which voters (motivated by some

combination of anger, hatred and delusional righteousness) condoned despicable

treatment of others. Consider such policies as forced sterilization laws in the early

1920s; the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; and the forced

relocation of the Cherokees, and other Indian tribes, in the “Trail of Tears” during

the 1840s. Except for the Three Strike referendum, the public support for the

policies of government cruelty in the above examples was communicated

indirectly by votes for political representation instead of directly for specific

policies. There is little doubt, however, that voters would have approved these

24

policies in a direct vote, and would have done so motivated largely by the

satisfaction of expressing their anger and hatred.

6. Conclusion

The arguments in this paper do not support the conclusion that atrocities are

more likely in democratic than in undemocratic political regimes. They are

obviously not. This is not, however, because the right to vote, no matter how

broadly extended, provides citizens strong protection against government violence

without effective constitutional restrictions on government power.24 It is worth

recalling that Hitler’s rise to power in the early 1930s depended on the strong

support he received from German voters who were aware of his obsessive hatred of

Jews and his ruthless inclinations for dealing with them. Although Hitler never

won a majority of votes (he always ran against several opposing candidates), it was

his electoral popularity that made the Nazi party the dominant political party in

1932, and made possible his appointment to Chancellor in early 1933. Upon that

appointment, Hitler quickly abolished the Weimar Republic and the existing civil

liberties and constitutional limits on government power, making Germany a one-

party state and eliminating any need for him to face another election.25 No one

knows if the Holocaust would have occurred, or how appalling it would have been,

if Hitler had not eliminated the constitutional constraints. But, the procedural and

substantive constraints that constitutions impose on government action can clearly

limit government’s ability to inflict as much harm on groups as is sometimes

favored by electorates motivated by anger and hatred.

24 See Hayek (1960, Chapter 12) for a good discussion of the importance of constitutional constraints on the power of government.25 Hitler did call for an election soon after becoming Chancellor and won 43.9 percent of the vote (his highest vote total ever), although the election was hardly a fair one. For more on Hitler’s rise to power, see Goldhagen (1996, pp. 85-87) for a very concise discussion.

25

Constitutional constraints on government are no reason for complacency,

however. Some of those constraints are commonly ignored when crises, real or

imagined, create demands for immediate government action, and their influence is

seldom fully restored after a crisis is over or forgotten.26 Those constraints can also

be eroded over time as the public begins taking the protections they provide for

granted, and government finds it convenient to circumvent them to satisfy the

demands of politically influential groups. As Henry Simons (1951, p. 20) warned:

Constitutional provisions are no stronger than the consensus that they

articulate. At best, they can only check abuses of power until moral

pressure is mobilized, and their check must become ineffective if

often overtly used.

But regardless of the reasons for the erosion of constitutional constraints, that

erosion increases the power of government to do good things, but also to do

harmful things. Unfortunately, doing good can end up doing serious harm, often

unintentionally.

Certainly, the federal government has used its increased regulatory power

and budgetary growth to address a host of grievances: some serious enough that

government action was clearly justified (eliminating Jim Crow laws), some not so

much (saving the family farm). But this has come at the unintended cost of

increasing anger and hatred that is dividing the political process, and to some

extent the society, into hostile camps. Of course, politics is, by its very nature,

subject to disagreements and hostility. But as government has attempted to address

a steady stream of injustices (including the all-purpose injustice of income

inequality, which former President Obama called “the defining issue in our time”27)

with transfers and subsidies, tax code manipulations, tariff protections, regulation

26 See Higgs (1987).27 In his 2012 state of the union address. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-address-2012_n_1229510.html

26

of education and labor and medical markets, immigration control, and the list goes

on, people seem to believe that injustices have increased. There are growing

numbers claiming they are not receiving their fair share, and convinced that the

political process is biased against them.28 Instead of controversies over government

policies seen as opportunities for mutually beneficial compromise, they are infused

with moral outrage and compromise is seen as heresy.

This political divisiveness is clearly on exhibit in voting, where the influence

of our emotions is least moderated by a sense of responsibility. No doubt many

voters are convinced that they are motivated by the benevolent desire to vote for

the candidate who would be best for the country.29 But it is not always easy to

separate our benevolence from our anger. Benevolent or not, what a lot of voters

have in common is anger and hostility toward those who don’t share their views on

social justice and voting against them.30 Writing the weekend before the 2016

presidential election, Haidt and Iyer (2016, p. C1) predicted that on the morning

after the election many on both sides:

will be shocked and disgusted that nearly half of their fellow citizens

voted for the moral equivalent of the devil. The disgust … is

particularly worrisome because disgust dehumanizes its targets. That

is why it is usually fostered by the perpetrators of genocide—disgust

makes it easier for ordinary citizens to kill their neighbors.

Disgust no doubt does make it easier for ordinary citizens to kill their

neighbors.31 And it makes it even easier for them to vote to kill their neighbors. But

my point is not that the United States, or any other western democracy, is in any

28 This is partly explained by rent seeking and the political advantage politicians in both parties hope to realize by exaggerating some problems, blaming them on the other party, and promising to fix them.29 It is also worth pointing out as Brennan and Lomasky (1993, p. 175) do that “even if voting does engage the moral impulses of the citizenry, there can be no guarantee that these moral impulses will in fact generate social goods.30 Glazer (2008) develops an expressive voting model in which the motivation to vote for a candidate, say candidate A, is anger at those who vote for candidate B and the desire to please those who also vote for candidate A.31 It is worth noting that a synonym for disgust is hatred.

27

immediate danger of experiencing a genocide. The possibility is worth considering,

however, that we increase that danger by expanding government in delusionary

attempts to vanquish social injustice. Such attempts invariably result in weaker

constitutional limits on government and the need to rely more on our tribal

instincts as expressive voters to provide a safeguard against the ultimate social

injustice.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Center for the Study of Economic Freedom at Arizona State University, where I am a Liberty Fellow, for providing financial support for work on this paper.

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