Jason DeBacker writes: > If we look at empirical evidence, it seems that > people do not vote in a self interested way, but rather vote based > on group-interest. Given this fact, is policy really endogenous? > > It seems that the most important characteristics in the > liberal/conservative divide are age, race, gender, ethnicity, > religion- things not easily influenced by policy. Income, > education, and employment status matter little relative to these > other personal characteristics. So (ignoring any effects of the > social choice mechanism), is policy determined only by these > exogenous characteristics? -- As opposed to policy being shaped by > characteristics that are in turned shaped by policy outcomes. I'd > interested in hearing thoughts on how policy influences the > ideological distribution.
I think you are mixing up correlation and causation here. On what basis do you say that "most important characteristics in the liberal/conservative divide are age, race, gender, ..."? Perhaps on the basis that we have polling data that can be broken down by these categories? As for "Income, education, and employment status" -- how are these any less "group characteristics" than "personal characteristics"? All you seem to have found is that people's votes are not easily changed by changes in their fortunes -- in other words, if you believe X while you are poor and/or unemployed, you tend to still believe X after you get a job and get rich. Why is that surprising? Do you think people should always vote based on their current short-term self-interest, without regard to what situations they may otherwise find, or have found themselves in, let alone what they might believe is right morally? What counterfactual are you imagining here? --Robert Book [EMAIL PROTECTED]
