Political influence works mainly by preventing unwanted change, not enacting wanted change.

Evidence

These patterns suggest that the status quo, not change, drives opinion-­policy congruence and that political influence operates primarily through preventing unwanted changes rather than achieving wanted ones. Appendix S1: Figure B. shows that congruence from the status quo is greater than congruence from change in all surveyed countries. — Mikael Persson and Anders Sundell, Blocking the Poor, 67

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: ‘Democracy as veto power’ — how responsiveness metrics would look if we counted blocked policy as the default form of representation.
• XREF: Echoes Sartori and Tsebelis on veto players, and Hirschman’s rhetoric of reaction.