At PM 08:09 08/22/12 +0900, you wrote:
>From: Richard Katz
>Date: 2012/08/22
>
>
>Ellis Krauss wrote:
>
>>How many people on SSJ would have said that Koizumi
>was not being rational....
>>If Noda's ... actions wound up being popular with the >>public and reviving the fortunes of the DPJ, how many >>of us would say that he was not being a rational actor >>in retrospect?
>>
>
>RK:
>
>Historian Barbara Tuchman makes an important
>distinction in her book >"March of Folly." In a world
of uncerainties, simple >miscalculation is >going to happen a certain percentage of the time and >therefore
>calculated risks by decision-makers are unavoidable.
>There is a world of
>difference between that and what she calls, "folly,"
>i.e. a refusal to
>heed the available evidence due to assorted blinders
>and excessive >wishful thinking.
>
>In the case of Koizumi, I would say he took a
>calculated risk to fight >for his policy goal. He had
not fought, he would have >been neutered, so >he had little to lose. He would rather have gone down
>fighting than >accept being neutered. Beyond that,
years of precedent >had shown that, >when he engaged in "Koizumi theater," couching policy >debates as a
>morality play between the good guys and the bad guys ("forces of
>>resistance"), it boosted his approval
ratings. So, his >"Hail May pass"
>of a snap election, expelling postal rebels, appointing >assassins, and >turning the postal issue into a grand referendum on the >whole notion of
>reform was a calcuated risk by someone quite attuned
to >public feeling.
>What is strange about Koizumi is that, having won in a >landslide, he did >not use his newfound power to push harder for his >policy goals. E.g. in >the effort to pass the postal bill, he had let it be
>watered down. He >could have restored the original
bill. He chose not to.

He also allowed the original bill to be written so reforms would not go into effect until 2017. The result of that blunder came just recently when Koizumi's postal bill was killed with just three LDP politicians (one of them Koizumi's son) voting against the move.

Koizumi's reform law to pay off debts of the Public Highways Corp., shepherded into law by Inose who is now vice governor of Tokyo, is not in the news now -- and there is no likelihood that it will survive until 2040.
Sam Jamesoln

>
>In the case of Noda, by contrast, one either has to
>assume complete >folly if his goal was
self-interested power-seeking, or >else one has to
>judge that passing the tax was more important to him than either his
>own >power or that of his party. How
many people on this >list believed in >January that prioritizing the tax hike would help Noda >and the DPJ? How >many still believed that in April or May?
>
>(How many who thought that the tax hike >was a good idea in substance also thought it would help >the DPJ politically? How many >who thought the tax hike was a bad idea in substance >thought it would harm the DPJ
politically?) > >>From what I can tell, the whole school of "public >choice" theory a la >James Buchanan rests of the notion that political
>actors--whether >politicians or bureaucrats--do not
act in order to >promote the public >good but to aggrandize their own position. To me, it >would seem that >Noda's actions must be taken as either an exception to >this standpoint, >or as evidence that the standpoint is, at best, >incomplete.
>
>However, I truly did expect rational choice proponents >to provide some >sort of explanation that made sense within their model.
>Meg McKean's
>answer, "If one gets a lot of utility out of pursing
>principle, then a >rational actor will do so" strikes
me as tautological, >i.e. he did it >because he wanted to do it. What we want to know is:
>under what
>conditions do politicans who face constant trade-offs
>among several >goals--including both personal
ambition and policy >goals and social
>passions--choose one goal or the other. Under what conditions does the
>>ranking of goals change?
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see a lot of
>interest among >rational choice proponents on the
list in trying come >up with an >explanation.
Psychologists have shown that it is >typical for everyone, >including social scientists, to weigh more heavily >evidence that >confirms their paradigms than evidence that undermines >it; they often >ignore the latter. And PET scans back up this finding >and help explain >why it exists.
>
>BTW, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel
>Prize in economics >for showing the impact on
economics of certain findings >from psychology, >has pointed out that the rational choice model is
>incomplete even in >explaining how people act to
achieve a given goal, what >Tom Berger >referred to as "thin" rationality. His findings--which >show how people >deviate even from pure instrumental rationality in >predictable ways-- >gave rise to the growing school of thought known as >"behavioral economics."
>He has a chapter on this issue, e.g. the "Allais
>paradox"
>in his recent book "Thinking Fast and Slow," and he
>has the brain scans to back up his psychological experiments. Even the
>>economists, political
scientists, etc. in the audience >to which he
>presented this finding violated their own premises, e.g. "expected
>>utility theory," when he had them
perform an >experiment. When he and his >colleague showed the rational actor proponents that >they did so, >they basically either ignored the contradiction or >presented what Kahneman considered >the equivalent of Ptolemaic epicycles.
>
>EK:
>
>>Another political science problem we
>>share with several other social sciences : we are
>>extremely poor at prediction but better at post-facto explanation.
>>
>
>RK:
>
>I agree and take it further than Ellis. Economists not >only have trouble >predicting the future; sometimes, they can't even >predict the past. This
>is especially true when intepretations of the past
have >ramifications >for policy. e.g. the cause the 1930s Depression or the >apparently purely >factual issue of whether or not there was a major >growth in income >inequality in the US over the past couple decades.
>Worse yet,
>politically liberal economists and politically
>conservative economists >come down on different sides
of what are seemingly >technical issues. I >wonder if there is any literature on how political >outlook correlates >with model preference among political scientists.
>
>
>Richard Katz
>The Oriental Economist Report
>
>