No time to call up the paper, but the basic answer is that such statements are evidence.
A common pattern is that politicians can propose policy A or B before entering office, but have an incentive to implement A once elected. So some of the politicians who propose B will switch to A once elected. But none of the politicians who support A will switch to B. For example this happens with economic security vs. economic efficiency platforms in Latin America (politicians prefer efficiency policies more once elected). About half of them switched in the study I read, and no efficiency campaigns switched to security after election.
That means the voter choice is simple. Even if you belief a politician might switch off B, the politician who is campaigning on B is always more likely to do B than the politician campaigning on A. This applies to head to head elections only ofc.
So the optimal decision theoretic choice is to support the politician who advocates for your policy in the election.
Maybe. That’s orthogonal to my comment. I was responding to
My default belief is that a politician implying something he knows the listener wants to hear is not evidence he’s believes or will act on that implication.
As to the empirical content of “evidence-based policy”, I’m not an expert on that question yet.
No time to call up the paper, but the basic answer is that such statements are evidence.
A common pattern is that politicians can propose policy A or B before entering office, but have an incentive to implement A once elected. So some of the politicians who propose B will switch to A once elected. But none of the politicians who support A will switch to B. For example this happens with economic security vs. economic efficiency platforms in Latin America (politicians prefer efficiency policies more once elected). About half of them switched in the study I read, and no efficiency campaigns switched to security after election.
That means the voter choice is simple. Even if you belief a politician might switch off B, the politician who is campaigning on B is always more likely to do B than the politician campaigning on A. This applies to head to head elections only ofc.
So the optimal decision theoretic choice is to support the politician who advocates for your policy in the election.
But “I will use evidence based thinking” isn’t a policy, and is completely unverifiable.
Maybe. That’s orthogonal to my comment. I was responding to
As to the empirical content of “evidence-based policy”, I’m not an expert on that question yet.