Trump, Political Innovator

People are complicated. Not only can each voter be described by a very high dimensional space of characteristics, the space of possible sets of voters is even larger. Because of this, coalition politics is intrinsically complex, making innovation possible and relevant.

That is, at any one time the existing political actors in some area use an existing set of identified political coalitions, and matching issues that animate them. However, these existing groups are but a tiny part of the vast space of possible groups and coalitions. And even if one had exhaustively searched the entire space and found the very best options, over time those would become stale, making new better options possible.

As usual in innovation, each actor can prefer to free-ride on the efforts of others, and wait to make use of new coalitions that others have worked to discover. But some political actors will more explore new possible coalitions and issues. Most will probably try to for a resurgence of old combinations that worked better in the past than they have recently. But some will try out more truly new combinations.

We expect those who innovate politically to differ in predictable ways. They will tend to be outsiders looking for a way in, and their personal preferences will less well match existing standard positions. Because innovators must search the space of possibilities, their positions and groups will be vaguer and vary more over time, and they will less hew to existing rules and taboos on such things. They will more often work their crowds on the fly to explore their reactions, relative to sticking to prepared speeches. Innovators will tend to arise more when power is more up for grabs, with many contenders. Successful innovation tends to be a surprise, and is more likely the longer it has been since a major innovation, or “realignment,” with more underlying social change during that period. When an innovator finds a new coalition to represent, that coalition will be less attracted to this politician’s personal features and more to the fact that someone is offering to represent them.

The next US president, Donald Trump, seems to be a textbook political innovator. During a period when his party was quite up for grabs with many contenders, he worked his crowds, taking a wide range of vague positions that varied over time, and often stepped over taboo lines. In the process, he surprised everyone by discovering a new coalition that others had not tried to represent, a group that likes him more for this representation than his personal features.

Many have expressed great anxiety about Trump’s win, saying that he is is bad overall because he induces greater global and domestic uncertainly. In their mind, this includes a higher chances of wars, coups, riots, collapse of democracy, and so on. But overall these seem to be generic consequences of political innovation. Innovation in general is disruptive and costly in the short run, but can aide adaptation in the long run.

So you can dislike Trump for two very different reasons, First, you can dislike innovation on the other side of the political spectrum, as you see that coming at the expense of your side. Or, or you can dislike political innovation in general. But if innovation is the process of adapting to changing conditions, it must be mostly a question of when, not if. And less frequent innovations probably result in bigger changes, which is probably more disruptive overall.

So what you should really be asking is: what were the obstacles to smaller past innovations in Trump’s new direction? And how can we reduce such obstacles?