Recap of Prior Posts in This Series::
Why do old ways of thinking and doing persist even after it becomes obvious they are totally wrong-headed, or at least suboptimal? Here are a few possibilities I’ve already explored:
Satisficing: a mindset that is satisfied with a good-enough result, rather than the optimal solution.
Bureaucratic inertia: the tendency of bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate the established procedures.
Path dependency: when it’s easier or less costly to continue along an already set path than to create an entirely new one that promises even greater returns.
Lock-In Effect: when early adoption of a technology, policy or practice locks-in specific pathways that are difficult and costly to escape.
Switching Costs: switching to new ways of doing things involves time, money, effort, uncertainty, risk, disruption, feelings of incompetence, and changing roles/relationships. Better to stick to the tried and true.
Habit persistence: habits tend to be sticky, because they achieve good-enough results with relative ease. You know what you’re doing, you know what to expect, and outcomes are okay. Change takes us out of our comfort zone.
Sunk Costs: when people and institutions continue something just because they have already invested unrecoverable resources. The tyranny of sunk costs keeps us throwing good money after bad, whether that bad is a failed policy or toxic relationship.
Special Interest Groups: people and groups with an interest in preserving the status quo resist innovation as a threat to their power and hard-won gains.
Ideological Commitment: what keeps the ideologically committed from changing their minds? Some possibilities: confidence that dogged persistence will eventually prove the doubters wrong; fear of losing one’s ideological bearings; and the risk of being ostracized by fellow believers or mocked by adversaries.
This post will explore how the politics of public performance undermines self-correction.
Politicians want to be leaders and so need followers. To make someone a follower, you need to convince them you have the Right Stuff, which includes projecting supreme self-confidence that you have the Answer. If you’re elected, you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, then you have to counsel patience or make excuses (ideally, blaming the Other Side). You can’t say you were wrong and then suggest a fix - at least, not if you want to be reelected.
In a nutshell.