A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Emerson In the latest American Journal of Political Science, Margit Tavits shows that in "23 advanced democracies over a period of 40 years," voters rewarded political parties for changing economic positions, but
Economists from Bastiat to Caplan have bemoaned the public's ignorance of economic matters. Is there any reason we should expect them to have good information on social matters? As one who doesn't believe there is any sort of objectively correct moral position on anything, that may be irrelevant, but the manner in which this post was written indicates that people should have better beliefs with better info.
It's a funny result. I wonder about what was measured, though. Changing rhetoric, changing policy or both? In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Kerry changed his rhetoric on trade dramatically but with very little policy behind the rhetoric and Bush wavered on same-sex civil unions with no underlying policy suggested. We can't know whether either were rewarded for either.
If the measurement is of rhetoric (i.e. exclamations unaccompanied by concrete proposals) that is one thing, but if the independent variable measured actually policy proposals then changing positions on economic factors usually will mean greater regulation and in social policy, deregulation so it may be "changing positions" may be a proxy for classic liberalism.
Chris, if voters were being conservative then they wouldn't be changing their minds about the social policy. The key point is that voters punish parties for changing positions even when the voters have changed their minds about the social policy.
Given that the list of countries where this tendency is shown are "advanced democracies" then we can assume that their political and social systems work, so maybe the voters are taking a rational view by being genuine conservatives - given the complexity of society and the interactions in it, it is never clear whether isolated changes in social policies will have a unwanted unintended consequences somewhere else.
Robin Hanson comments on a recent political science paper. Margit Tavits shows that in "23 advanced democracies over a period of 40 years," voters rewarded political parties for changing economic positions, but punished parties for changing other soci...
TGGP, you lament the public's ignorance, but don't think better info improves beliefs?
Economists from Bastiat to Caplan have bemoaned the public's ignorance of economic matters. Is there any reason we should expect them to have good information on social matters? As one who doesn't believe there is any sort of objectively correct moral position on anything, that may be irrelevant, but the manner in which this post was written indicates that people should have better beliefs with better info.
Doug, as always, for more details follow the link.
It's a funny result. I wonder about what was measured, though. Changing rhetoric, changing policy or both? In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Kerry changed his rhetoric on trade dramatically but with very little policy behind the rhetoric and Bush wavered on same-sex civil unions with no underlying policy suggested. We can't know whether either were rewarded for either.
If the measurement is of rhetoric (i.e. exclamations unaccompanied by concrete proposals) that is one thing, but if the independent variable measured actually policy proposals then changing positions on economic factors usually will mean greater regulation and in social policy, deregulation so it may be "changing positions" may be a proxy for classic liberalism.
Chris, if voters were being conservative then they wouldn't be changing their minds about the social policy. The key point is that voters punish parties for changing positions even when the voters have changed their minds about the social policy.
Given that the list of countries where this tendency is shown are "advanced democracies" then we can assume that their political and social systems work, so maybe the voters are taking a rational view by being genuine conservatives - given the complexity of society and the interactions in it, it is never clear whether isolated changes in social policies will have a unwanted unintended consequences somewhere else.
Dark Principles
Robin Hanson comments on a recent political science paper. Margit Tavits shows that in "23 advanced democracies over a period of 40 years," voters rewarded political parties for changing economic positions, but punished parties for changing other soci...
Rob, the paper says "Western Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States" from the Comparative Manifesto Project.
What does "advanced democracy" mean?