Why politicians are bad

It has equipment onboard that can test for the remnants of microbial life in the ancient lake bed where it landed. It is equipped with a helicopter that can provide an overview of the area to be explored. It can scoop up and store rocks that eventually will be brought back to Earth for more intensive analysis.

Our nation is also a leader in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, neuroscience, genetics, semiconductor development, and many other areas. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, our scientists worked with those from other countries to design new vaccines that reduce the disease and its associated fatalities. Indeed, our institutions of higher learning attract talented students from around the globe and are considered among the best in the world.

In contrast, our political operations are crumbling. Our government was organized years ago in a highly agrarian society, and the founders required two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures to approve any major institutional changes. Though there have been 27 successful amendments to the Constitution, it is very difficult to update our institutional arrangements for an economy and society that have been transformed since The challenge of making structural improvements means that as our country has urbanized, become more diverse, seen much of its economic activity migrate to the coasts, and been globalized, it is hard to update our institutions to reflect those changing realities.

In the post-World War II era, Congress and the president have scaffolded our scientific endeavors for success. They fund scientists, support higher education, train the next generation of experts, and insulate scientific enterprises as much as possible from political maneuvering.

The scientific enterprise also features highly trained individuals who operate based on facts, cooperate internationally, and work together in a collegial manner.

None of that is true for our politics. The high level of political misinformation would never be tolerated in science. If Mars scientists launched Perseverance based on false theories or fake information, it would not have landed safely on Mars.

Scientific principles would have laid bare the falsehoods for all to see. Yet there is no parallel corrective mechanism for truth or facts in the political world as leaders can spout lies without being held accountable for their inaccuracies. One could envisage two levels of entry points in a political career:. This two-stage vetting process would tie the two levels of government, creating a coherent political career path.

And ensure that the pool of politicians is made of competent, prepared people — not the case now. You have competent political leaders here and there, but they are lost in a sea of incompetent corrupt or corruptible politicians.

Also, and this is important, the vetting process would help re-equilibrate the playing field between the public and private sectors. Yet that is exactly what politicians do. For the whole system to work, however, there is still one fundamental question that needs to be answered: What kind of education — exactly what expertise — and what type of work experience should a political candidate acquire to qualify? The French have traditionally had an answer to that question: public administration studies.

ENA graduates. After 70 years of operation, three presidents, seven prime ministers and many ministers have come out of ENA. Has this given good results? In any case, ENA has been accused of producing elitists with the wrong kind of expertise. And that brings us back to the question.

If aspiring politicians and civil servants are going to get a degree in public administration, what kind of administration should they study? To put it another way: Can we agree on the ultimate goal of public administration? Private Sector Myths and The Value of Everything, Making and Taking in the Global Economy Mazzucato is shaking neo-liberals in their dearest free-market convictions, calling for a total rethink of the role of the State.

What is required according to her is a complete reshaping of the market economy and recognition of the value of public enterprise. She reminds us that the SDGs exist, they have been voted for unanimously at the UN and it is time, she says, to follow through, with the State launching green projects, as she explains in this diagram:. There is no doubt that fixing democracy also means rethinking the role of the state. But to be practical: Why not start with what is easy to change, introduce a simple requirement that political candidates should be educated — any university degree will do — and have some relevant work experience, showing an ability to manage and lead?

How about trying to have competent leaders for a change? Featured image: Photo by U. Claude Forthomme is a writer and an economist. She authored many fiction books under various pen names in both English and Italian; she is considered a prime exponent of Boomer literature and has founded the Boomer Lit Group on Goodreads. Impakter informs you through the magazine and empowers your sustainable lifestyle with its marketplace.

Home Essays. In contrast, the seriousness of punishment for violating standards is of limited significance in all three countries, and so too is the effect of educational status.

There is extremely strong support for our first hypothesis Table 3. If people perceive politicians as breaking any of the three informal standards, they are significantly more likely to distrust political parties.

Moreover, the effect is found in all three countries. The standard that generates the most distrust is central to the theory of representative government: elected representatives should keep the promises that they made to voters when seeking votes. After controlling for all other influences, the pooled data analysis estimates that trust in politicians will fall by 2. The effect is biggest in Spain; dishonesty in making political promises lowers trust by 3.

The effect of politicians being seen as taking money for favours is second in impact. In the pooled data analysis it lowers trust in political parties by an estimated 1. While this is substantial, the effect is two-fifths less than that of politicians breaking promises; moreover, the impact varies substantially between countries.

It is twice as high in Britain as in France. If citizens think most of their politicians over-indulge in their private lives, this has a significant effect on trust too; however, this effect is less than breaking other standards.

After controlling for taking votes and taking money, in all three countries it lowers trust by under one point Table 3. Contrary to hypothesis 2, measures of the seriousness of bad behaviour have no consistent effect on political trust. Endorsement of the strictest punishment—send violators to jail or eject them from office—has no significant effect in the pooled data set or in France and Spain.

While significant in Britain, the size of the effect is much less than that for misleading voters or taking money Table 3. Moreover, in all three national surveys, people who see corruption as an important problem do not differ significantly from their fellow citizens in their level of political trust.

The significant effect in the pooled data set is small and may simply be a by-product of having three times as many interviews when calculation significance Table 3.

The contrasting findings for the first and second hypotheses shows that it is not the seriousness of what is done but whether a politician behaves badly that depresses trust. The importance of controlling for party loyalties is robustly confirmed. At the time of the survey, the governing party in Britain was the Conservatives, in France the Socialists held the presidency, and in Spain the Popular Party was in office. Notwithstanding major differences between these parties, in all three countries those who voted for the governing party are substantially more likely to trust parties Table 3.

The effect holds after controlling for the negative impact on trust of believing that politicians who hold office renege on the promises they make when campaigning to win office. While the halo effect of supporting governments of different ideologies has a positive impact on trust, boosting it by as much as 1. Moreover, in Spain, where the governing party has been mired in all kinds of allegations of bad behaviour, the boost to trust among its supporters is less than one-third of the depressing effect on trust of politicians misleading their voters.

In all three countries those who do not vote for the governing party considerably outnumber government supporters. They include supporters of established opposition parties that have been in government and hope to return; new parties that have never been in government; and those without any party preference.

Established parties have the most grounds for being distrusted, since they have previously been in government; they include the Labour Party in Britain, the Socialist Party in Spain and the Republicans in France. After controlling for all other effects, in all three countries supporters of the governing party, whether Socialist or conservative, tend to be significantly more trustful and supporters of the established opposition parties significantly less trustful.

Insofar as holding office encourages trust, this implies that the alternation of established parties between government and opposition will lead partisans to alternate between sometimes trusting and sometimes distrusting a government that in theory is democratically representative.

In other words, the impact of partisanship is not ideologically based; it reflects the temporary electoral success of competing parties. In preliminary regressions, we tested whether those who do not support established parties rotating between government and opposition tend to be more distrustful of parties.

In fact, it makes no difference in trust, even in Spain, where protest parties were strongest at the time of the PBB survey. One possible explanation is that in Spain the overall level of trust in parties was very low. Supporters of protest parties were not significantly more distrustful than the national average and the same was true for non-voters. In other words, those who have stopped voting for the established parties of government are not so much angry as apathetic about the claims of governors to be trustworthy.

Notwithstanding the emphasis in sociological theories on the pervasive effect of socio-economic status on popular attitudes, empirical tests of the effect are inconclusive cf.

None of the three demographic indicators—high status, low status and being a woman—has a significant effect on trust in the pooled analysis. The consistent failure of socio-economic status to show a significant effect indicates that people who are more informed about politics are just as likely to distrust political parties as citizens with a secondary school education.

The same is true for those with the low socio-economic status, except in France, where the effect is marginally significant but the impact is slight Table 3. Gender has no significant influence in the pooled analysis, Britain or Spain.

French women are inclined to be less positively trusting but the size of the effect is small. In a preliminary regression analysis, we tested the effect of age which the PBB survey divided into four groups. In all three countries the youngest group, age 18—24, did not differ significantly in their trust from the oldest, over 55; the same was true of the intermediate age groups. This implies that distrust in government is an all-age phenomenon independent of specific events in early socialization or of any inter-generational changes in standards of private morality.

Our evidence shows that to confine the effect of corruption on trust to actions breaking laws is to misread the minds of voters. Breaking informal standards is a major cause of distrust too. The most important informal influence on trust is politicians saying one thing to get elected and doing the opposite once in office. This implies that attempts to improve trust in politicians by adopting formal laws will be inadequate, since major informal influences on distrust are within the law.

Although our theory is in principle applicable to all political systems, the evidence comes from only three European countries. Notwithstanding differences between the histories, institutions and party systems of Britain, France and Spain it is striking that separate regression analyses come to the same conclusion.

The violation of informal standards about how politicians ought to behave substantially depresses trust in democratically elected politicians. Whatever the standard broken, the minimum punishment tends to be loss of office. Moreover, people who think a less serious punishment is acceptable are just as likely to distrust parties as those who consistently favour severe punishments. A single survey cannot show whether perceptions of bad behaviour have been increasing.

Surveys over the past several decades show that distrust in political parties and politicians is long-standing Klingemann and Fuchs ; Norris ; van der Meer and Hakhverdian Whiteley et al. This suggests that many citizens have long-established predispositions to trust or distrust their representatives, views that are, at most, only temporarily altered by events or the behaviour of a particular party leader cf.

Allen et al. Because standards of bad behaviour are informal, they are easily contestable. In the absence of substantial evidence of wrongdoing, a politician accused of acting badly can reject allegations.

In the face of evidence, a politician can claim that there is no wrongdoing as long as there is no violation of a formal legal standard.

When allegations and evidence of bad behaviour imply that laws have been violated, as in the investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, the response can be, as in the case of the Administration of Donald Trump, a counter-charge against critics of corrupt or bad behaviour.

Insofar as counter-charges are convincing, this is likely to fuel popular distrust in all politicians. Partisanship qualifies the extent to which individuals distrust political parties cf.

Anderson et al. While the effect of being in government makes supporters more trusting, the fact remains that a substantial majority in citizens, whatever their partisan status, see politicians as misleading voters. Distrustful citizens do not accept the classic Schumpeter model of democratic elections as offering a choice between alternative parties of government.

Instead of seeing degrees of corruption that allow for a choice of one party as a lesser evil Cordero and Blais , they see both alternatives as forming an untrustworthy cartel cf. Katz and Mair Confronted with a choice of parties that cannot be trusted to keep their pre-election promises, citizens can decide not to vote.

However, while election results show fluctuations in turnout, there has been no consistent downward trend in turnout in West European countries.

However, there has concurrently been a big rise in votes for unestablished parties that have never been in government Mudde ; Wagner and Meyer In France, outsider candidates from the right and left took almost half the vote in the initial round of the presidential ballot.

In Spain, the two established parties of government together won just under half the vote in In Britain, an outsider party, UKIP, has been so successful in getting the Conservative Party to adopt its major policies that it lost its own electoral support. Although the bad behaviour of politicians has destabilized party systems, it has not led to a loss of trust in democracy as an ideal cf.

Ferrin and Kriesi ; Kumlin and Esaiasson Distrustful citizens are not voicing an attack upon their democratic political system. They are expressing dissatisfaction with the extent to which politicians fall short of formal and informal standards of democratic behaviour that they would like political elites to change Vasilopoulou Three anonymous reviewers made helpful comments.

The term corruption was historically used to refer to violating standards of all kinds; this meaning survives in reference to a computer file being corrupt. Because the term corruption has been loaded with many different meanings see Heidenheimer and Johnston, ; Rose ; Philp ; Heywood ; Ardigo and Hough ; , in this article the term bad behaviour is used to refer to the violation of informal social norms about actions of politicians.

A Google Scholar search on 21 February found , references to political trust, more than twice the , for political distrust. While a theoretical case can be made that corruption and trust have reciprocal effects on each other, to test this with a Structural Equation Model requires variables that can serve as control instruments and these do not occur in the PPB survey cf.

Wroe et al. For details of variables and how they have been coded, see Supplementary Table S1. Allen N. Google Scholar. Google Preview. Anderson C. Ardigo I. Churchill W. Cordero G. Della Porta D. Dogan M. Dowding K. Easton D. Ferrin M. Fuchs D. Gailmard S. Greene D. Heath A. Heidenheimer A. Heywood P. Hine D. Manchester , Manchester University Press. Inglehart R.

Jacquet J. London , Allen Lane. Jennings B. Representation and Responsibility , New York , Plenum , pp. Jennings W. Katz R. Kavanagh D. Klingemann H. Kumlin S.