Re: Retrospective Voting

[Clay S]

On Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 10:50:30 AM UTC-8 vinamrs...@gmail.com wrote:

> "In “retrospective voting,” for example, you vote to re-elect the incumbent if your life improved (more than you expected) during the incumbent’s term, and otherwise you vote to replace the incumbent with someone else. If most voters did this, incumbents would have strong incentives to make people’s lives go well."

1. you still have negative incentive to vote because your vote won't make a difference and it costs you time.

2. candidates already have an incentive to make voters lives better insofar as that's an indication of what they'd do if re-elected. it's just one factor in a voter's overall determination of expected utility per candidate. voters already could do this, but they're irrational about it and would rather vote to "own the libs" or whatever. and i think they can afford to do that since their vote is so unlikely to have an impact anyway. if you were one of 24 voters, presumably you'd be wayyyyy more likely to really stop and ask, "is owning the libs worth destroying my bank account?"

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

Very interesting stuff Vin. Great find on Robin's page - I tried following their jury-election link, but the page has been taken down. And I can't find any archives of it either. Oh well.

What you described as "Retrospective Voting" can be traced back in some form to China's ancient system of Mandate of Heaven. Under the Chinese system, anytime things went badly, people concluded that the empire had lost its "mandate from heaven", and that the people were justified in rebelling and overthrowing the empire. Conversely, if things were going well, the empire would claim that they have the "mandate of heaven", and this legitimizes their political authority. In essence, the incumbent rulers were allowed to keep ruling as long as things were going well, and they were replaced as soon as things no longer went badly.

It's a really appealing idea. If you have a completely clueless and ignorant populace, "voting based on results" is arguably better than "voting based on what you think". Some obvious problems:

• It will lead to ultra-short-term policies that are disastrous in the medium/long-term
• For example: racking up massive deficits that will leave the nation bankrupt 20 years later. Most politicians are perfectly content to be in power for 20 years, and step down right before shit hits the fan
• Under the definition of "retrospective voting" you suggested, voters should still vote for politicians who are engaging in such policies
• It will lead to extremely unethical policies that are designed to improve the lives of 51% of the voters
• For example: enslaving one quarter of the population and forcing them to do all chores for the other 75%
• Sometimes things go bad because of factors outside the politician's control. Like natural disasters. Or other politicians putting up roadblocks
• If you aren't happy with the incumbent, how do you go about choosing the person to replace him? 
• If you're assuming that your citizens are incompetent at evaluating politicians, they would also be incompetent at choosing between multiple alternative candidates
• If your citizens are capable of intelligently choosing between multiple candidates, they can also similarly evaluate the incumbent

Yes, there are other pros as well. Hence why I think this idea does have some merit. But for any populace that is even somewhat intelligent and well-informed, they will do a lot better using their judgement and not just voting based on their personal experiences. 

Regards,
Rajiv

On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 9:15 PM Vinamr Sachdeva <vinamrs...@gmail.com> wrote:

1. I'm not saying that it'll solve the collective action problem (which it will but at the margin?) but that it is welfare enhancing (lower social costs for higher social benefits).
2. The argument is that ig voters try (and I think they do at least partially) to take other factors (e.g. figuring out the effect of the candidates' policies, political tribe allegiance, etc.) into account, it'll be worse.

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