A lot of the ways that politicians deviate from public opinion have much less meta explanations than this Inadequate Equilibria hypothesis. On marijuana legalization, for example, a lot of politicians’ opposition is because police get massive overtime from the drug war, and therefore oppose legalization. Police unions tend to be major political players all the way up to the state level, and often the dominant one at the local level because there are a lot of police and if they vote as one then it’s a significant chunk of the total votes you need to get elected mayor or alderman. You don’t need some Keynesian beauty contest. Just normal special interest politics where a small group with a concentrated interest in an issue can matter more than a large group with a more diffuse interest, because the small group is more willing to change their votes based on it. Same basic structure to the problem of reducing police violence.
Or take something less partisan and less in the news: overfishing. Normally pro-environment coastal politicians generally support overfishing, very much against the recommendations of the Very Serious People, because fishermen are a sufficiently concentrated interest group to require courting, and of course their interest is in their income today, not some other person’s income in a generation. Attorneys general or other elected insurance regulators in coastal states will often take the added step of climate denialism specifically on the subject of anticipated coastal erosion, because coastal homeowners don’t want to pay a fair price for insurance or have their resale value lowered by an unfriendly prediction, and will vote out anyone who makes screws them on that. Again, none of this because the media thinks serious politicians have to do it, and if the media covers it at all they will usually agree that it’s wrong. But it’s all rational vote-seeking.
A lot of the ways that politicians deviate from public opinion have much less meta explanations than this Inadequate Equilibria hypothesis. On marijuana legalization, for example, a lot of politicians’ opposition is because police get massive overtime from the drug war, and therefore oppose legalization. Police unions tend to be major political players all the way up to the state level, and often the dominant one at the local level because there are a lot of police and if they vote as one then it’s a significant chunk of the total votes you need to get elected mayor or alderman. You don’t need some Keynesian beauty contest. Just normal special interest politics where a small group with a concentrated interest in an issue can matter more than a large group with a more diffuse interest, because the small group is more willing to change their votes based on it. Same basic structure to the problem of reducing police violence.
Or take something less partisan and less in the news: overfishing. Normally pro-environment coastal politicians generally support overfishing, very much against the recommendations of the Very Serious People, because fishermen are a sufficiently concentrated interest group to require courting, and of course their interest is in their income today, not some other person’s income in a generation. Attorneys general or other elected insurance regulators in coastal states will often take the added step of climate denialism specifically on the subject of anticipated coastal erosion, because coastal homeowners don’t want to pay a fair price for insurance or have their resale value lowered by an unfriendly prediction, and will vote out anyone who makes screws them on that. Again, none of this because the media thinks serious politicians have to do it, and if the media covers it at all they will usually agree that it’s wrong. But it’s all rational vote-seeking.