This strikes me as something akin to a not-quite alternating Prisoners’ Dilemma. The party in power can unilaterally take the selfish option (goose the economy for electoral benefit) or not. Over time there are three types of outcomes. 1) if you act selfishly when given the chance and I don’t, I’m a chump (and vice versa); 2) if neither of us act selfishly, we’re even; and 3) if we both act selfishly we’re still even, but the economy is worse overall because we keep flooding the information system (prices) with noise.
One natural solution would be for all parties to agree to remove the option to act selfishly and lock in outcome #2. Such a setup, then, can emerge from all parties initially consenting, just as Odysseus asked his men to bind him to the mast. (Of course, this system can also arise in less consensual, more problematic ways.)
The idea of a civil service seems similar in spirit. Each party might prefer to stuff the bureaucracies with their cronies and use all the various Assistant to the Regional Postmaster positions as electoral giveaways, but of course the tables will get turned when they lose and who knows if any of those people are even marginally competent.
(In both examples, though, the solutions have their own problems, since we can’t escape tradeoffs.)
This strikes me as something akin to a not-quite alternating Prisoners’ Dilemma. The party in power can unilaterally take the selfish option (goose the economy for electoral benefit) or not. Over time there are three types of outcomes. 1) if you act selfishly when given the chance and I don’t, I’m a chump (and vice versa); 2) if neither of us act selfishly, we’re even; and 3) if we both act selfishly we’re still even, but the economy is worse overall because we keep flooding the information system (prices) with noise.
One natural solution would be for all parties to agree to remove the option to act selfishly and lock in outcome #2. Such a setup, then, can emerge from all parties initially consenting, just as Odysseus asked his men to bind him to the mast. (Of course, this system can also arise in less consensual, more problematic ways.)
The idea of a civil service seems similar in spirit. Each party might prefer to stuff the bureaucracies with their cronies and use all the various Assistant to the Regional Postmaster positions as electoral giveaways, but of course the tables will get turned when they lose and who knows if any of those people are even marginally competent.
(In both examples, though, the solutions have their own problems, since we can’t escape tradeoffs.)