Democracy and the price of a vote

A typical economist does not have all that much in common with a typical protester in a failing dictatorship. Dismal scientists favour cautious lessons, carefully crafted and suitably caveated, backed by decades of data and rigorous modelling. Protesters need electrifying arguments and gargantuan promises about just how good life will be as soon as their aims are achieved, since that is how you recruit people to a cause. But the two groups share at least one trait. They both tend to be ardent democrats.