Chapter dzǹ: Is Ļere a Bias Toward Overregulation? ȂȁȆthe expenditures or efforts of others. So government sells public goods
compulsorily, for taxes. But no such solution, imperfect as it may be, has
been found for the public good of monitoring the government itself.ȆIf
an average voter should go to the trouble of keeping informed and polit-
ically active, most of the benefits, in the form of sounder policy, would
accrue to others. While reaping only a very minor share of these benefits,
he would have to bear all of his own costs. He has about as little rea-
son to incur them as he would have to stop driving his car to hold down
air pollution. He has little incentive to work for what is in the general
interest.ȇ
Exhorting citizens to study the issues and take an active role in politics
largely ignores these facts. It tacitly regards concern with governmental
affairs as a noble activity holding a special claim on each citizen’s attention.
Actually, badgering him to divert his money, time, and energy from work
or recreation to political studies that perplex or bore him will contribute
little to wise policymaking. It is an imposition, too, if holding down the
range of government decisions in the first place could have held down
these demands on his attention.
Even if, implausibly, the voter should become well informed and vote
accordingly, he cannot express himself on each program separately. If he is
voting on issues at all when choosing between candidates, he is voting on
policy positions all jumbled together in vaguely specified packages, along
with the candidates’ actual or advertised personalities. Furthermore, his
own monitoring of the government through informed voting (and lob-
bying) would do little good unless other voters joined him. He is only
one out of many, and his own informed vote would hardly be decisive
for the outcome of an election or for the decision on some program. It
is rational for him to content himself with superficial notions about elec-
tion issues, voting for a party label out of habit or for a well-packaged
ȆĻe concept of monitoring as a public good is due, I believe, to Roland McKean.
ȇĻe weakness of personal incentives to seek collective rather than individual benefits
is a leading theme of Mancur Olson, Jr.,Ļe Logic of Collective Action(ȀȈȅȄ). Ļe free-
ride motivation of the average voter also characterizes the individual member of a spe-
cial interest group. It operates, though, to a lesser degree. Ļe group member belongs
to a smaller group with a more intense and concentrated interest than the average
voter does; his own interest is less diluted by being shared with others. Furthermore, as
Olson notes, an organized interest group may be able to command the support of its
members by supplying services of value to them individually, such as business informa-
tion and other trade-association services, in addition to its collectively desired lobbying
function.