The Democratic Dilemma among Elites: Do Legislators Make More Reasoned Decisions than the Public?

Are legislators knowledgeable enough to make good public policy decisions? We examine three aspects of legislators’ decision-making: how much they know about the consequences of policy proposals, specifically their fiscal impact; how much they learn when provided expert research about these proposals; and how much their evaluations of these proposals reflect their consequences. We compare their performance on each of these tasks to a large sample of the public. Legislators’ beliefs about fiscal impacts are inaccurate and biased, but become more accurate and correlated with legislators’ policy positions in response to fiscal expertise. In terms of knowledge, learning, and incorporating information into their policy evaluations, legislators largely resemble the public. Legislators do not exhibit stronger reasoning skills. However, by the time legislators vote on bills, legislators do appear to base their decisions on accurate beliefs about policy. Our results suggest legislators cast informed votes because of legislative institutions and processes rather than any superior, pre-existing policy expertise or learning skills relative to the general public. These findings highlight the importance of designing legislative institutions with lawmakers’ decision-making constraints in mind.