Tracking the 'Pander Bears'
[vc_single_image image=”55891″]Transparency is now so widely assumed to be desirable that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the damage it can do — in political campaigns, for starters. A working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research that examines how political candidates campaign in closely contested races shows a “pervasive incentive” to pander by emphasizing narrow and divisive issues instead of addressing more urgent matters “that lack a substantial dimension of ideological conflict.”
Once in office, these “Pander Bears” carry forward this attention to the more divisive issues, not so much by actual changes in policies as by “a misalignment between the focus given to different issues and their relative importance.”
Incumbents “over-provide effort on divisive issues,” creating an incentive for other candidates in the race to concentrate on those same issues. This is ironic, since incumbents in fact stand a better chance of re-election when they move to the center, giving less attention to divisive issues that might help them more in primary contests.
In any case, the researchers come to sobering conclusions. The tendency to pander “can lead politicians to spend their time pursuing policies that are not only harmful to the minority, but also an inefficient use of time from the majority’s perspective.” What’s more, “greater transparency about how politicians allocate their time may increase socially inefficient posturing,” Incumbents “engage in more divisive speech when electoral pressures are stronger or their actions [emphasis added] are more likely to be observed.”
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