There has been a lot of consternation in Australia following the Coalition Government’s first budget, which was released last week. The Government broke many (perhaps even most?) of its pre election promises, and has been roundly condemned for its duplicitous behaviour.

There has been some commentary  that suggests we should have seen this coming, and should not trust pre-election promises. Such commentary is correct, but does not go far enough in recommending solutions.

There are two main reasons that governments may not honour pre-election commitments: either they were lying, or perhaps circumstances changed so that their commitments were no longer desirable or even feasible. In the case of many broken promises we could argue all day on which was the underlying cause. But why should we bother? We have no mechanisms to enforce compliance with promises, and even if we did there would be many cases where it would cause more harm than good.

The solution lies with voters, rather than with politicians:

Instead of voting for policies, we need to vote for politicians. Circumstances change, and a Government necessarily has better information on a range of topics than the electorate. Electorates should not try to dictate policy via the ballot box – instead they should strive to elect politicians who are thoughtful, intelligent, value and use evidence, and exhibit a strong desire to do what is best for the country.

People disagree on “what is best for the country”, but in most cases we are better off electing a politician who has a goal of maximising social welfare even when we disagree over what the social welfare function looks like. A good example of this is Nick Xenaphon – he appears to genuinely attempt to achieve the best for both South Australia and Australia (although I don’t agree with all of his views and policies, I still view him as a very positive component of Australian politics).

Politicians respond to incentives very well, and voters voting for policies and not politicians have created the current political climate. If we all reserved our votes for intelligent, thoughtful and principled politicians then it wouldn’t be long before political parties start producing intelligent and thoughtful political leaders.