Entrenchment often arises from unintended path-dependent feedback, not strategic design

Evidence

As it happens, the phenomenon of entrenchment as it has been understood by social scientists and historians (and even the occasional legal scholar) is in no way limited to the self-consciously strategic efforts of political actors. To the contrary, in many contexts the focus is on “entrenched” rules, policies, and institutions that have become socially and politically difficult to change owing to path-dependent processes of political development that were never intended or foreseen by their creators. In fact, social scientists view this kind of unintentional entrenchment, or “lock in,” as a quite general phenomenon, resulting from a somewhat predictable set of political dynamics—including, in particular, the political feedback effects of empowering winners while disempowering losers that we highlighted in Part II. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 492

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the key distinction between intended strategic entrenchment and unintentional path-dependent ‘lock in’, with its causal mechanism named.
• XREF: connects to: Some policies are self-consciously designed to entrench themselves and their creators.; No reliable predictive model exists for whether major reforms will entrench — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 429; Learning and adaptive preference shifts under a policy can themselves function as entrenchment — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 56 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Total systems change, and human agency’s effects often subvert its intentions #corroborates (0.82)
• Social acceleration is a self-reinforcing feedback loop #corroborates (0.75) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 434
• Goals change behavior only when paired with performance feedback. #corroborates (0.72)