Strategic policy choices can entrench outcomes without formal rule changes

Evidence

This Article has sought to broaden the frame that public law places around entrenchment. Its core contribution has been to call attention to the ways in which politicians, parties, and policies can be entrenched against change not just by changing the formal rules of the political game but by playing the game in strategic ways: enacting substantive policies that strengthen political allies or weaken political opponents, shifting the composition of the political community, or altering the structure of government decision making. These kinds of functional entrenchment strategies allow political actors to achieve the same results without resorting to the kinds of formal rule changes that would raise red flags from the perspective of public law. Recognizing the continuity of formal and functional entrenchment thus invites the question of why public law identifies and condemns the former while ignoring or pardoning the latter. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 508

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the core formal-versus-functional entrenchment distinction, foundational for the reader’s sticky-ideology model.
• XREF: Parallel to the informal-institution literature (Milgrom law merchant, diamond bourse norms) where functional substitutes do the work formal law is thought to do. — connects to: Durable depolarization requires structural or institutional rather than one-shot interventions — Derek E. Holliday, Yphtach Lelkes, and Sean J. Westwood, Why Depolarization Is Hard: Evaluating…, 50; Substantive policy choices produce entrenchment just as formal rule changes do — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 2; 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 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Functional political entrenchment works without changing formal legal rules #expands (0.88) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 173
• Learning and adaptive preference shifts under a policy can themselves function as entrenchment #expands (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 56
• Entrenchment often arises from unintended path-dependent feedback, not strategic design #complicates (0.78) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 492
• Choice architecture steers decisions even when all options remain free #corroborates (0.74) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 530