Blameworthy: How Party Loyalty Corrupts Voter Judgment

If conservatives believe that the best economic policy is minimum intervention (enforce contracts and otherwise stay out of the way) then government can be guilty of causing poor economic performance but not of causing good economic performance. No double-standard for conservatives.

If liberals believe that extensive government intervention is necessary to keep the economy running well, and that economic performance is determined by how well the intervention is designed and executed, then it makes sense to give government credit for good economic conditions and blame for bad. The plots show a double-standard for liberals.

Big caveat: "conservative" and "liberal" don't mean the same things in Britain as they do in the US.

Attribution errors abound in American politics, that's for sure. Generally, a president and his administration are blamed or credited for actions that usually depend on Congress. The Federal Reserve policies that have so much influence on both the nature and extent of upturns and downturns rarely gets the credit/blame.

Examples? Clinton tended to take credit for Republican Congressional fiscal legislation, to which his own contribution was not exactly of the leading-edge variety. Alan Greenspan basked in praise for Fed policies during good times, but seemed immune to charges of error for bad times.

Further, just as we talk of shifting and incidence of taxation, cannot we talk about the shifting and incidence of responsibility for policy successes and failures? To what extent do we credit/blame voters or special interests for legislative hits and misses? Legislators don't work in vacuums, either.

@Chris Koresko

Liberals do not assume the quality of government as fixed. That particular vice is limited to libertarians.

Hard to say if party loyalty corrupts judgment, there's a logical alternative theory.

Suppose a person thinks conservative policies help the economy, liberal policies don't. Suppose the conservative party adopts conservative policies, and the liberal party adopts liberal ones. That person's attribution of success could be to policies, not the party. Which might be equally irrational, but has a little more defensibility.

@David,

Libertarians don't view quality of government as fixed, either. They view it as having unlimited downside and virtually no upside.

Yes, precisely. Fixed at some negative point.

@david

No, variable in a negative range.

David,

I agree with the gist of your assessment, but I question whether the libertarian position is a "vice". "The quality of government is not fixed" is just another way of saying that the government solution can work if we get the "right" people in government. Conversely, government failure is seen as evidence that the "wrong" people were in office. What you describe as the liberal position, therefore, becomes an endless exercise in the No True Scotsman fallacy.

In light of this, the libertarian position is that if the success of the policy depends on having the "right" person in office, then the policy is fundamentally flawed because the "wrong" person frequently gets elected in practice. Thus, as andy and 'G' said, unlimited downside with limited upside.