Whether New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is guilty as charged, the statement he made in his defense illustrates what public choice theory has taught economists: as James Buchanan wrote, we must study “politics without romance.”
At about 12:50 in the video (well worth watching), Cuomo declared:
My job is not about me. My job is about you. What matters to me at the end of the day is getting the most done I can for you. And that is what I do every day.
Perhaps we can find politicians genuinely devoted to doing good for their electors, who selflessly sacrifice themselves to that task, and who don’t realize that the benefits they provide to some (“you”) are at the cost of harming others (those who don’t agree or see their own opportunities reduced). Perhaps we can even find the rare politician who tries hard not to hurt some in order to give privileges to others but, instead, to do only what he thinks is unanimously wanted by all his constituents—that is, in conformity with the rules presumably meeting everyone‘s consent in an implicit social contract.
But it is the contention of classical liberalism in general and public-choice economics in particular that it is unrealistic and perilous to found a political system on the assumption that the typical politician is or can be such a saint. John Stuart Mill wrote:
The very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the holder; not because it is always so, but because such is the natural tendency of things, to guard against which is the special use of free institutions.
This also applies to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who produced the report against Cuomo and may have gubernatorial (or other political) ambitions.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 6 2021 at 2:28pm
Many of the worst authoritarians in world history could have said the same thing (maybe some did) and been applauded by their citizens.
Phil H
Aug 7 2021 at 3:22am
This insight is right… I’m not quite as impressed by it as Lemieux seems to be. After all, it’s the same insight as drives markets: people want to do the best for themselves. So a market creates an environment in which the efforts to gain for oneself also benefit the people around you. And rule-of-law democratic institutions create an environment in which a politician’s best option is to try to do what his constituents want (in theory). Obviously Lemieux is much less impressed by the successes of constitutional democracy than I am. That’s fair enough. But the problem isn’t the self-interest.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 7 2021 at 11:11am
The contentious part of your argument is:
Even “in theory,” this is not true. A politician’s best option is typically to do what 50%+1 of his voters want. Remember that individual preferences and values are different. Moreover, the majority is inconsistent; see my TIR article ” The Impossibility of Populism.” And this is not speaking of other problems such as the control of the political agenda and the fact that you can get nearly the bias you want depending on the voting system. My Regulation review of William Riker’s famous book mentions some of these supplementary problems.
As you suggest, the consequences of these phenomena can be minimized with constitutional democracy, but the “constitutional” is more important than the “democracy.”
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