Earmark bans may have worsened political dysfunction by nationalizing voter attention

Evidence

Ironically, this suggests that one of the drivers of political dysfunction in the United States may have been anticorruption efforts related to earmark spending—that is, to federal appropriations used to support projects in individual congressional districts. (In 2011, President Obama declared in his State of the Union address that he would veto any bill that contained earmarks, and the following month, the Republican-controlled Congress enacted a ban on such spending.) Voters who are worried about real, tangible consequences to their lives may be less likely to engage in conformist identity signaling during elections. — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 588

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the common good-governance reform narrative; an anticorruption measure with an unforeseen epistemic cost. — connects to: Local politics resists misinformation more than national politics does — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 587; News coverage prominence shifts how heavily people weigh issues in political judgments — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404

Broader Connections

• News coverage prominence shifts how heavily people weigh issues in political judgments #expands (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404