Retrospective Voting: Worse Than Chance

Are there any voting schemes which would especially favor retrospective voting?

"In fact, I think it's an important reason why policy isn't much worse."

I think its the reason why policy isn't much worse. It is really the only tenable explanation I can think of.

"Are there any voting schemes which would especially favor retrospective voting?"

Yes: Restrict voting to the competent. Possible criteria consisting of say... the ability to solve a quadratic equation. No need to have an age limit with this system.

A much more through exposition is available in "The Republic of Gondour" by Mark Twain.

Doesn't this just reflect that pro-growth policy within a jurisdiction often involves goring political important oxen? Voters would then reward good times equally regardless of the cause, while punishing free trade and other efficient policies.

On average, I would have to conclude that the same applies to economists, present company not included, however.

I've always thought this retrospective voting was good for a different reason. Incumbents have an electoral advantage. Bad economic times counteract that, and I think it prevents political entrenchment and encourages experimentation with new policies. Carter nearly beat Reagan with a terrible economy, without this voting, Reagan may never become President.

"Voters literally know less than zero about economic policy"

A good example would be free trade where too many voters hold the belief that restricting imports would increase the size of the GDP.

Yes, but consumers do the same thing. If you noted that your local computer dealer sells excellent and cheap new computers, and you decided to buy one - do you reward dealer because HE did something well, or because of global improvement of technology? I guess that in 80% of cases, you bought computer because of some global technological improvement. Without such improvement, you wouldn't buy new computer even if your dealer was the world champion.

Sometimes we cannot (or we are not willing to invest effort) to recognize whether quality results from luck or competence, but in the long terms, statistics will sort it for us. So called "invisible hand."

Isn't there a bigger problem with retrospective voting? Policies have some short-term effects and some long-term effects and voters are much more likely to punish/reward the short-term effects. So, we get politicians trying to create apparently good short-term effects at the expense of really bad long-term outcomes. Wasteful spending is a good example of this, but there are plenty of others.

"Compared to policy-based voting, retrospective voting is the lesser evil."

Yep, retrospective voting is the worst system imaginable, except for all the others. Certainly adjustments can be included to compensate for the degree of randomness inherent in such a voting method, but the gigantic advantage is that retrospective voting is based on output and policy voting is based on input.

"Yes: Restrict voting to the competent. Possible criteria consisting of say... the ability to solve a quadratic equation."

Or maybe a literacy test? Never gonna happen. Thank Jim Crow for that.