Politicians deliberately shape who votes by steering policy to select their own electorate.

Evidence

Although some selection effects along these lines will be unintentional, strategic politicians have every incentive to manipulate policy for the purpose of shaping their electorates and entrenching their hold on power. A famous example is the “Curley Effect,” described by Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer. James Michael Curley, who served four terms as the mayor of Boston during the first half of the twentieth century, was supported by a political base of lower-income Irish residents but opposed by Boston’s wealthier Anglo-Saxon voters. To increase his own electoral prospects, Curley was interested in keeping poor Irish in the city and in encouraging the wealthy Anglo-Saxons to leave. With no formal immigration law at his disposal, Curley instead used his control over public projects, patronage, zoning laws, and the like to make things as hospitable as possible in Boston for his own voters and as uncomfortable as possible for his opponents. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Classic example of Tiebout-style sorting being weaponized by incumbents—connects to the reader’s interest in how ideology gets entrenched via institutional levers (here zoning/patronage rather than law). — connects to: Politicians invoke nationhood to address the whole electorate, whatever their policy views. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 81; Policies create their own supportive constituents and destroy their opponents — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 204; Incumbents use policy to both neutralize opposition and mobilize supporters to entrench themselves. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 247 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• A distinct literature studies how polities endogenously choose their own voting rules #expands (0.90) — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 23
• Policies entrench by reshaping who holds political power. #expands (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 194
• Some policies are self-consciously designed to entrench themselves and their creators. #exemplifies (0.82)
• Public choice theory treats all policy as self-interested coalitional maneuvering #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1583
• Separate electorates aimed to guarantee Untouchables independent political leverage against numeric and physical domination #exemplifies (0.79) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1303
• Political parties create the people and majority they then claim to represent #corroborates (0.78) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 194
• Parliamentary voting order materially shapes which outcomes can be coerced #exemplifies (0.76) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 91
• Discourses exercise constitutive power that constrains political decisions and shapes policy paths. #corroborates (0.74) — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 976
• Elected leaders can strategically cherry-pick identity components. #exemplifies (0.72) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 578