Politicians who succeed by failing

Politicians bemoan when their policy proposals fail. They blame the other side and institutions that generate legislative gridlock. But are all such failures genuine? Could it be that some politicians want their own policy proposals to fail? Could a failed policy proposal ever be electorally beneficial?

Feigning a policy agenda: The why and the how

In a recent paper, I argue that, in some cases, politicians will “feign” support for policies that voters demand: proposing and publicly endorsing such policies but then exerting little effort toward their adoption. They do this in the expectation—and hope—that these policies will not become law because: (1) they prefer the status quo policy and (2) they anticipate that voters will not hold them entirely accountable for the proposal’s failure.

To be sure, policy proposals often do fail because of external factors. Opposition from other political parties and disagreement within their own party can prevent proposals from becoming law. Stringent checks and balances—a bicameral legislature, super-majoritarian institutions, and judicial review—further increase the risk of proposals failing.

Yet precisely because some failures are genuine, politicians may benefit from feigning support for policies. If a politician proposes a policy that voters demand but fails to have it adopted, voters will be uncertain as to why the proposal failed and whom to blame: did the politician exert too little effort, or did the proposal fail despite the politician’s every effort? This uncertainty can lead voters to give an incumbent politician some benefit of the doubt when they fail to deliver policies that voters demanded; in turn, voters may rationally continue to support, and even reelect, such an incumbent. But this then generates a perverse incentive. A politician who disagrees with voters’ policy demands may be incentivized to feign support for the policies that voters demand. Indeed, if their policy proposal fails, not only will the politician avoid enacting policies that they disagree with, but they may even be reelected.

Feigning in practice? Reagan and the Christian Right

Consider Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In 1980, Reagan was elected President of the United States with unprecedented support from the Christian Right, and it was understood that winning a second term would likely require their continued support. This was no foregone conclusion. The Christian Right had only recently become involved in national politics and, in 1976, helped elect Democratic president Jimmy Carter.

However, historical accounts suggest Reagan did not wholeheartedly agree with the divisive social agenda of Christian conservatives. Far from the devout churchgoer they expected, Reagan rarely attended church. When coming under fire for this, Reagan delicately explained he didn’t want to inconvenience other churchgoers with his presence. His long-time political consultant Stu Spencer, however, offered a more candid explanation: on Sunday mornings, Reagan preferred reading newspaper comics—the “funnies.” Reagan’s policy record while governor of California also hints at disagreement with the Christian Right’s agenda, having “signed into law one of the nation’s most liberal abortion bills.”

Historian Neil J. Young suggests this disagreement led Reagan to feign support for the Christian Right’s agenda: “Small gestures could be extended, like proposing a bill [… ] or delivering a speech […], but less effort would be done to see that such a bill […] would pass or that a speech’s promises would actually be carried out.” Other accounts similarly describe the Reagan administration’s plan as keeping “Christian Right supporters ‘in a state of perpetual mobilization’ by supporting various bills and constitutional amendments that would energize religious conservatives but routinely go down in defeat.”

Toward the end of Reagan’s first term, Christian conservatives were left disappointed by a string of failed policy proposals.

But who was to blame?

Some absolved Reagan of blame, choosing instead to attribute the failures to barriers beyond his control: opposition from Congress and moderates within his administration. Blaming Congress was certainly Reagan’s preferred explanation. When meeting with Christian Right leaders in early 1984, he lamented “we are having such difficulty with members of Congress on this issue.”

Others rejected these explanations. They blamed Reagan himself and questioned his personal efforts in progressing “moral legislation.” Paul Weyrich, Co-founder of the Moral Majority, worried that “Reagan was ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing who deliberately seeks to achieve liberal objectives by pretending to be a conservative.”

Contemporary studies of the time described the source of the uncertainty that plagued Christian conservatives: they were “unable to recognize sincere from half-hearted administration efforts.”  

Despite Reagan’s lack of legislative achievements—and lack of effort in progressing their agenda—Reagan succeeded in convincing Christian Right leaders to support him in the 1984 election and, ultimately, he was reelected for a second term. 

We will never know for certain whether Reagan was feigning support for the Christian Right’s agenda. However, it is perhaps telling that Reagan’s second term was characterized by similar disappointment for Christian conservatives with many prominent figures in the Christian Right eventually concluding that Reagan’s efforts had not been genuine. By the end of 1984, evangelical intellectual Carl Henry complained that Reagan had given them “little more than lip service,” and executive director of the College Republican National Committee Ralph Reed begrudgingly summarized the Reagan years as purely “political theater.”

A model of feigning politicians: What we learn

Motivated by Reagan’s presidency and other political events, in my paper I develop a formal theory of politics that incorporates the possibility that politicians can feign support for their policy proposals. I explain when, and what kinds of, politicians we might expect to feign support for policies that voters demand. Politicians who are more ideologically aligned with status quo policies are more likely to feign—so too are politicians with weaker historical records of enacting legislation or when political institutions more frequently gridlock legislation. A novel implication of my theory is that politicians may be harmed electorally by having records of being more effective legislators because it limits their ability to successfully deceive voters when they choose to feign support for policies.

It is tempting to conclude that feigning is altogether problematic for voters and democracy. When politicians feign, it leads to more frequent gridlock, more status quo bias in policy outcomes, and policy will less often coincide with what voters’ demand.  Yet, if we entertain the possibility that, in some cases, the demands of the pivotal voter do not fully account for the preferences of society at large or may be misinformed, then the welfare implications are less clear. Feigning politicians may not be problematic after all: at least in the short run, it may allow politicians to protect society from bad policies, while maintaining sufficient electoral support to hold on to power.