Democracy is said to reflect the will of the voters. And in some policy domains, this is a reasonable approximation of reality. When governing parties and their opponents know that political issues are debated in the media – and that the people are watching – they have powerful electoral incentives to respond to the dictates of public opinion.

This book is about what happens in democracies when the people are not watching. Although the public cares about some issues most of the time, and many issues some of the time, certain issues receive little attention at all. These issues are often no less important to the public interest than their more sensational counterparts, but, for a variety of reasons, voters only dimly perceive the connection of such matters to their own welfare.