ȂȆǿ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophy
individual voter (and nonvoter). Other such phenomena include: the fuzz-
ing of issues in a two-party system (the Hotelling effect), and the associ-
ated drift over time in what positions are considered respectably main-
stream; the jumbling together of diverse issues in often incoherent pack-
ages; the chasm between the personal qualities of an effective campaigner
and those of a sound statesman; various rather mechanical inaccuracies
of the political process (including several paradoxes of voting and what
Robert Dahl labeled “minorities rule”); the fragmentation of decisionmak-
ing power and responsibility among levels and branches of government
and among individual politicians, bureaucrats, and judges; the analogous
intertemporal fragmentation of responsibility; the associated reasons why
politicians and bureaucrats have short time horizons; the forestalling of
market solutions to problems by governmental preemption; the way that
government activism, far from just remedying externalities in the private
sector, creates major externalities in government decisionmaking itself;
the lesser scope for prices to function in government than in markets; and
the coercive aspect of government that is absent from private business.
He does not draw the implications of politicians’ and bureaucrats’ consti-
tuting special interests of their own (he should have taken to heart such
case studies as Alan Ehrenhalt,Ļe United States of Ambition,ȀȈȈȀ; John
Jackley,Hill Rat,ȀȈȈȁ; and Eric Felten,Ļe Ruling Class,ȀȈȈȂ).
One wonders what world Wittman has been living in. Hasn’t he no-
ticed examples of government irresponsibility and failure in policy on
crime, education, welfare, regulation, litigation, money, and budgeting?
Can voters diagnose who is responsible for current poor economic per-
formance, especially given lags in the effects of policies? Hasn’t Wittman
noticed voters’ tendency to blame or credit the administration in power
for the current stage of the business cycle? Hasn’t he noticed the wretched
quality of arguments on economic policy issues presented by all major
sides and reported on television and in the popular press? Doesn’t he rec-
ognize that the quality of political discussion is so low because politicians
appeal to voters as they actually are, with their short attention spans in
their actual circumstances?
Although Wittman neglects most such counterevidence, his treatment
of what he does notice suggests how he would deal with the rest of it. It
is all too easy, he says, to point to such standard examples of supposed
government inefficiency as rent control, tariffs, tobacco and other farm
subsidies, and agricultural-marketing orders. But some observers com-
plain about too much foreign aid or too much support for right-wing