Matthew Yglesias » Parliamentary Procedure Counterfactuals

Matthew Yglesias » Parliamentary Procedure Counterfactuals: "Precisely because sophisticated observers understand that these “desire” promises aren’t really promises, interest-groups and voters who have strong feelings about these things don’t need to act on those feelings during a campaign. Consequently, candidates can make unrealistic promises to interest-groups or ideologues without fully facing the wrath of the other side. Ultimately, I think this not only breeds worse policy, but it breeds an unnecessarily childish political debate. If we knew in advance that election-winners would be basically able to implement their agendas, then it would be more necessary for party leaders to campaign on agendas that they think are compatible with electoral victory and governing success. One thing you see in Britain is that opposition parties with a realistic chance of winning tend to put forward relatively modest platforms full of explicit commitments to not change certain aspects of the policy status quo. Precisely because you can have wild swings in policy, leaders who want to win can’t just kinda sorta promise their base that they’ll get everything they want"