A cynical view would be that politicians always act in their own interests. [1] I think that is unrealistic, in that many politicians go into politics because they want to make society better. Nevertheless it may be interesting to look at why purely self-interested politicians might nevertheless also act in society’s interest. The obvious mechanism that might achieve this is democracy. It is in a politician’s own interest to be re-elected, and to gain votes a politician needs to do things that make people’s lives better. An important qualification, of course, is that they only need to make a proportion of people’s lives better, and this could involve making a small minority of people much worse off.
The imperfections of this mechanism are obvious, but it is also clear it works. Most politicians in a democracy work hard to garner favourable public opinion. Although general elections in the UK need only happen every five years, if it looks like a Prime Minister is not going to win in two or more years time MPs may decide to replace them, as we saw happen twice last year. The major proviso is that, just as advertising can sell you things you do not need, politicians can also fool voters.
One obvious limitation of a normal democracy is that voters only get to choose between political parties rather than individual policies. Under FPTP they in reality only get to choose between just two parties, which means a ‘bad’ government may still get re-elected if the opposition appears even worse. A clear example where a politician that has not tried or failed to improve society may nevertheless get re-elected is if they can find some issue which gains support despite these failures: fighting a popular war, for example. Another reason a bad
