An interesting concept I stumbled across the other day called policy leverage.

Before the concept of policy leverage makes sense, we first need to develop a framework for political action and interest. There are several ways to model democratic systems and the role that voters and parties play within them. Generally, it seems however that economics has become such a big part of politics that there are almost inseparable. This means that politics is to a large extent driven by economic interests of individuals, groups, parties, nations and so on. Since driven by economic interest it also makes sense to interpret the relations between actors within a democratic system to be economic actors maximizing their utility or simply monetary interests. We therefore understand the voter as consumer of policy, the parties as corporations selling policies and votes as currency. This is not a new concept, and it can get much more complex than this, but its basics are an important framework for the idea of policy leverage.

Now as a corporation it is often not in our interest to produce the best product. The unbreakable pen would be great for the consumer but would doom the pen industry. Similarly, there have been uncountable incidents of companies purposefully designing products in a way that they break after a few years. All this is to make sure that people keep buying from them again and again. You can say what you want about the DDR (most criticism is absolutely justified!) but their Using this idea, we can now turn to politics.

As politicians what interest do I have to solve a problem if its solution means I will lose a core topic of my campaign for the next election. Also, there might be some who are only voting for me because of this specific issue. Just like the corporation the politician will make a calculation. How many voters do I gain for solving the issue versus how many am I going to lose because the issue is solved by the next election? This calculus leads to policy leverage where parties hold voters essentially hostage by not introducing certain policies. A good example for this is abortion laws in the US. National abortion laws for all states were never properly implemented in law although there have been plenty of chances for the democrats in the past decades. Instead, the abortion laws hung on the thin thread of one supreme court ruling which might now be overturned. Abortion is an important issue especially in the US and in combination with a two-party system the democrats were able to hold lots of voter’s hostage by always threatening that if they do not get elected the republicans could change the shaky abortion laws.

This idea assumes large degree of egoism and greed on the side of politicians which I think is more than justified but can be challenged. It also illustrates well how democratic systems itself or at least democratic systems infected by economic considerations can produce purposefully bad policies. This economic competition in politics must however also be considered as a positive. Although it hurts to say I doubt that politics would be as effective as it is today if it were not for the constant competition for votes and the consequent “creative destruction” and innovation in policy that takes place. Still there are also downsides to it that need fixing like the issue of policy leverage.