ȂȂȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophybureau would submit its budget requests to, in effect, “the directors of the
governing party,” who, anxious for votes, would develop suitable checks
on the bureau’s expansionism. He does not recognize, as William Niska-
nen (ȀȈȆȀ) later explained, that self-aggrandizing bureaus are in fact not
supervised by a sufficiently authoritative central budgeting agency. On
the contrary, they are likely to develop cozy relations with the congres-
sional committees that are supposed to monitor them. In short, Downs
fails to grasp the full implications of fragmented government decision-
making.ŜśŘŕŏť ŐŞŕŒŠ
Ļe fragmentation of decisions over time contributes to an unintended
drift of the character of the whole economic and political system. Espe-
cially under a two-party system, platform-builders and campaigners often
avoid drawing issues in a clear-cut way.ȁȀA candidate opposed to protec-
tive tariffs would not call for complete free trade for fear of losing some
protectionist voters who would support him on other issues. He realizes
that many a voter will choose the lesser evil rather than “waste his vote”
on a third party even if one happened to mirror his own set of views more
accurately. Political straddling, together with the jumbling together of
unrelated issues (and even the candidates’ personalities) in every election,
water down the issue of interventionism versus the free market into an
uninspiring choice between parties leaning just a little more one way or
a little more the other. Incentives and prejudices favoring a middle-of-
the-road position leave the direction of cumulative policy drift to who-
ever are most active in locating the two sides of the road, or even just
one side. Ļe kinds of choices that voters and politicians consider feasi-
ble (and, similarly, the positions they consider unrealistically extreme) are
conditioned by how policy has been drifting. Resistance to drift weakens
when not only politicians but even scholars make a fetish of recommend-
ing only policies they consider politically “realistic.”ȁȁUnder such circum-
stances, discussion does not adequately consider long-run repercussions
and long-run compatibilities and clashes among various goals and mea-
sures. Major choices, such as ones affecting the general character of the
ȁȀAn early explanation was provided by Harold Hotelling (ȀȈȁȈ) in an article basically
dealing with economic matters.
ȁȁOn the harmfulness and even immorality of such “realism,” see Clarence E. Phil-
brookȀȈȄȂ.