They seem unable to help themselves. And it’s probably our fault.

Politicians love taking credit for good things that are outside of their control, while avoiding responsibility for bad things that are mainly their fault. At least while in government.

In opposition, they love blaming the government for bad things outside of government control, while avoiding crediting government where credit is due.

And partisan activists on all sides love running the same play in support of their preferred team.

They don’t do it because they’re stupid. They do it because it seems to work. And it only works if we’re just a bit stupid.

And they’re probably, unfortunately, right. But they don’t have to be. We can do better.

Let’s take a couple of examples. 

Last week, Prime Minister Luxon tweeted that “Rural confidence is at its highest point since 2017”. He credited government policy that “has helped them by cutting red tape.”

Perhaps policy gets a small amount of credit. There have been fewer policy announcements recently that amount to promises to abolish the dairy sector.

But very high dairy payouts and international red meat prices ought to take the lion’s share of the credit – and neither of those are within the government’s control.

For most of the past year, the government has claimed credit for the Reserve Bank’s interest rate reductions. As the Official Cash Rate dropped to 4.75%, then to 4.25%, and continued down to 3%, both the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister credited the government’s “responsible fiscal management” and “stopping wasteful spending”.

It is certainly true that governments can make the Reserve Bank’s inflation-fighting job harder by running large deficits. When it does that, the Reserve Bank must run tighter monetary policy than it otherwise would choose, if it wants inflation to stay on track.

But the government has been running substantial, ongoing, structural deficits since it took office. The kinds of deficits that would not be fixed with a normal economic rebound. And if we ignore the creative accounting of the recent OBEGALx measure, there is no return to surplus on the horizon – or at least not within the forecast window published with the budget.

If the government had gotten post-Covid spending back down to the levels in Labour’s 2019 Wellbeing Budget, interest rates could have fallen even further.

Taking credit where it is not due risks drawing undue blame when the cycle turns.

If agricultural sector confidence weakened with a drop in overseas demand for their products, would the government want to take blame for it?

The Reserve Bank’s independence in setting monetary policy is meant to shield politicians from being blamed for decisions that are necessary for getting inflation rates down. Those decisions always mean short-term pain to avoid even greater long-term pain. Is it really a good idea to teach people to credit or blame the government for the Reserve Bank’s interest rate moves?

It’s a risky game.

But it works, at least in the short term, because voters have a difficult time knowing which part of government, if any, is really to blame or for different things.

In a prior academic life, I helped with a bit of work looking at that issue – at least using American data. We surveyed a panel of American voters, and American expert political scientists, about the amount of influence that different levels and branches of government had over a variety of different outcomes.

America has federal, state, and local governments. Each has different jobs. Within the federal government, Congress generally decides how the government spends its money; the Federal Reserve sets monetary policy and guides overall economic conditions; and, the President has responsibility for how the various agencies run.

Or at least it was true when we did that work. Things have since gotten more complicated.

We found that political scientists tended to apportion responsibility narrowly. Agencies with little to do with particular outcomes were not viewed as very influential over those outcomes.

The broader public tended to spread responsibility around – attributing credit and blame far more indiscriminately. They even viewed the Federal Reserve as being ‘somewhat influential’ over the content of the Budget. The Federal Reserve really has no obvious influence over Congressional decisions about which programmes get funding.

It is obviously bad for democratic accountability.

Politicians wishing to take credit for things outside of their control, or to damn their opponents for things outside of their control, will find people eager to support their interpretations.

And it is bad for policy more generally. If governments encourage voters to credit them for things outside of their control, they will face greater pressure to try to control things best left alone.

If we refuse to blame governments for things that are entirely within their control, like ongoing substantial structural deficits, while crediting them for things for which they deserve no credit, we will continue to get the governments we deserve.

To read the article on The Post website, click here.