Ilya Somin, "Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2020)
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What is the premise of Ilya Somin’s “Free to Move” and why does he critique traditional ballot‑box voting?
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Hello and thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Ilya Soman. Ilya is professor of law at George Mason University. He specializes in constitutional law and property law. But listeners who work in political theory will likely know him from his work on public ignorance. Ilya's new book is titled Free to Move Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. It's just been published with Oxford University Press. And when we think of voting. We typically have in mind elections. Campaigns.
Election day. In this intuitive sense, voting is a matter of casting a ballot. In a Process that Results in a collective decision. After election day, the votes are counted, and on most views the The majority rolls. But things with voting really aren't so simple. For one thing, citizens bring different levels of informedness and ignorance into the voting booth. What's more, famous mathematical analyses cast doubt on the very idea of a majority will that could be revealed. by processes of voting. Given these facts, what are we to make of democracy? Now, in the new book Freedom Move, Ilya Somman defends the idea that foot voting Is an essential element. of democratic governance. Foot voting is the capacity of individuals to move to the jurisdiction or the nation whose government or policies most suit their preferences, or to select.
from various options. They're favored providers of various kinds of services. As usual, there's a lot to talk about. But let's begin as we usually do with our guest.
Hello, Ilya, how are
you?
Good. How are you? Thank you so much for having me.
Well, it's great to have you on. I'm doing fine today. Um So, you know, before we get into talking about the book, which I I will I will say, you know, um has a an additional kind of significance given that um many of us are on lockdown and are not free to move. Um but before we get into uh into some of that, you know, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm a law professor at George Mason University. Uh I've been here now since 2003, which seems like a really long time. This book has origins uh in uh in two aspects of my biography. One that will jump out to most people is that I'm an immigrant myself. Uh I'm from the Soviet Union, so I personally experience the enormous benefits of foot voting insofar as the US, for all its flaws, is just vastly superior to the Soviet Union on you know many grounds, both uh in terms of freedom, in terms of Economic opportunity and so on.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the premise of Ilya Somin’s “Free to Move” and why does he critique traditional ballot‑box voting?
0:00–9:21
2
How does Somin’s personal background and early research on federalism shape his foot‑voting theory?
9:21–21:52
3
Why does Somin argue that ballot‑box voting suffers from rational ignorance and negligible impact?
21:52–39:07
4
In what ways does foot‑voting provide higher‑impact and better‑informed political choices than voting with a ballot?
39:07–57:10
5
What are the main advantages and common objections to inter‑jurisdictional foot‑voting within federal systems?
57:10–1:02:23
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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