The secret of winning the swing vote is having policies slightly different from your opponent. Recall Tyler Cowen and Daniel Sutter’s Why Only Nixon Could Go to China in Public Choice.
Cowen and Sutter say that a policy could depend on information – on which policies or values everyone could potentially agree, or on which agreement is impossible.
Politicians, who value both re-election and policy outcomes, realise the nature of the issue better through inside and secret information and superior analytical skills (or access to those skills), whereas voters do not have access to such information base or skills.
Only a right-wing president can credibly signal the desirability of a left-wing course of action. A left-wing president’s rapprochement with China would be dismissed as a dovish sell-out. The Nixon paradox held because citizens could vote retrospectively on the issue.
Left-wing parties adopt right-wing policies because they are good ideas that will get them re-elected. Bob Hawke, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton were firmly camped over the middle-ground.
Only centre-left economic reformers can credibly signal the desirability of their economic reforms because of the brand name capital they invested in distributional concerns and protecting the poor.
Because of their proven record and brand name, they do not jeopardise their support or credibility by seemingly departing from their core values. They must have done so because it was the right thing to do given events and the long-term interests of the lower-income groups they represent.
Bill Clinton balanced the budget and introduced sweeping welfare reforms in 1996 after vetoing two earlier bills because this finally fulfilled his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it”. As he signed the bill on August 22, 1996, Clinton stated that the act:
gives us a chance we haven’t had before to break the cycle of dependency that has existed for millions and millions of our fellow citizens, exiling them from the world of work. It gives structure, meaning and dignity to most of our lives.
Jimmy Carter was a bigger deregulator than Reagan. Obama uses drones far more often than Bush did.
Major labour law reforms were passed in Germany under a left-wing government after decades of 10% unemployment rates and average German unemployment spells for about a year. The key part of these reforms came into play just before the global financial crisis hit and was a major reason for the unemployment rate in Germany falling despite the onset of GFC.
Why Only Nixon Could Go to China also explains why hawks such as Reagan and Begin and other right wing party leaders were able to negotiate peace treaties that eluded more dovish politicians who ran on ‘peace now’ slogans.
Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, walked with Gorbachev in Red Square and seriously offered complete mutual nuclear disarmament in Reykjavik in 1986. Any other American President who offered complete mutual nuclear disarmament would have been impeached.
Hawks also have the right negotiating stance. Robert Aumann argues that:
If you are ready for war, you will not need to fight. If you cry ‘peace, peace,’ you will end up fighting… What brings war is that you signal weakness and concessions.
Only then will both sides negotiate because they know that the other side is willing to walk away and perhaps not come back for a long time. Unless it gets reasonable offers that will be binding on both sides for a long time because both win more for honouring their promises rather than threatening war again soon.
Left-wing politicians can deliver economic reforms because they can deliver new voting blocs to the realignment of political coalitions. This new bloc of centre-left voters and some members of existing political and special interest groupings benefit from regrouping and joining new political coalitions that push through the reforms. An ageing society, budget deficits, technological innovations and shifts in production cost structures and in consumer demand can all make the existing political coalitions less rewarding than in the past.
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