Friday, January 16, 2009

The microeconomics of politics





It has been said by different news media ,how important were new sources of communication and information technology during the 2008 Presidential election in the US. Cell phones, e; mails, black berry, Blogs , You tube ,and web pages all of a sudden, has become discovered by politicians who need to get closer to voters ,but very often they fall short of keeping it just like an unfulfilled promise . A recent opinion research done by the ONG e-leccion.net (http://www.e-lecciones.net/) ,evaluates the increasing importance of these news source of communication and information technology in elections in Latin America. Four presidential elections held in Latin America in the year 2006, were analyzed and compared with the elections held in Spain, concerning the influence of information technology, and the results were obvious indication that these new sources are replacing traditional ways , or at least they complement them.
The following table(source:e-elecciones.net) , shows the higher share these different and new source of communication ,have on the preferences of both voters and politicians to get closer to one another:





Traditional means like TV ,decrease from 66% to 58% of preferences, radio and news paper stay stable instead. When it come to evaluate the real value for Presidential campaigns of these new
sources, E;mail and web pages got the first place, blogs and messages services ,came to a second place.-
Is this a new trend ?. Microeconomics might help us a little to find some answers because it is all about the allocation of time and time is a scarce resource .The indirect cost (time value),and the direct cost (Income value), becomes the unique constraint upon which consumers must get the optimum input combination to maximize utility . Both Time constraint and income constraint, becomes the limitation to take into account, when it comes to understand consumer behaviour . So it happens with politicians behaviour, which are the equivalent of producers , or the supply side of services, who must get in touch with theirs customer (consumers) preferences (Promises demand), throughout a “production process” (basically campaign Promises),which requires inputs and technology production, subject to the time-income constraint consumer use for maximization purposes . It might also be the other way around, such as the supply (both original and smart politicians),creates its own demand. (The Say law applied to politics),but it does not make any difference about the nature of the problem to deal with. Politicians like consumers ,are both short of time . Therefore, they will prefer technological means which save time, and besides it allow them to get closer than otherwise because that is part of the business they are in. Thus, it is also about emotional intelligence ,on a broader scale but simultaneously based on the one on one connection , which politicians can not live without ,either to get elected, and to get good evaluation on opinion polls as well . It follows that the new paradigm goes like this: The closer people feel their leaders , the better they evaluates them.-