Is getting elected and being an effective politician correlated?

Some researchers have been looking into what people vote for in a politician and whether this gets us effective politicians. It would seem not:

We found that voters are not necessarily able to see what politicians are required to do in their day-to-day work and therefore have to rely on characteristics that might seem to matter for leadership, but may not actually be that important

The researchers go on to observe:

Voters increasingly choose politicians based on personality traits such as how warm, reliable, or decisive they appear to be, judged often by how they look or how tall they are.

This last point reminds me of Scott Adams observation that, all other things being equal, the tall candidate with good hair will win. Nevertheless:

...voters prefer candidates who are agreeable, but are won over less by people who look warm...

It seems that the politician who engages with the public by nodding, smiling and say "absolutely something should be done about that" is the same politician who, faced with the wiles of the professional bureaucrat, will smile, nod and say "absolutely, we'll do that".

We quite often pretend that we want politicians who think for themselves, challenge the assumptions of the bureaucracy, and provide leadership or direction. But when we get to the ballot box, we ignore all that and choose the one who says he's our friend. The problem with this is that we've likely chosen a candidate who wants to be everyone's friend making meaning that - and you'll see this all the time in councillors and MPs - he or she will spend their entire time crafting appealing platitudinous soundbites rather than doing the job. It's also a reminder that the 'good constituency MP' is perhaps less useful than the MP who spends more time doing questioning and challenging things in Parliament. Not that MPs should ignore their constituencies but rather than spending the five years of their term opening fetes, visiting businesses and kissing babies in Bigchester South might be agreeable to those constituents but doesn't make for an effective MP.

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It probably won't work. A postscript on Syria.

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We are always conflicted on humanitarian matters, on Britain's role in the world and on whether the suffering of civilians in some foreign place is, or isn't, our business. And if it is our business, what the nature of that business should be.

So we have - inconsistently and selectively - intervened. Sometimes this intervention is one of those surgical strikes beloved of my neo-conservative friends, more often it's a series of bombings that are not quite so precisely targeted. And sometimes it's real troops nervously clutching guns as they creep down unfamiliar streets unsure whether the people they see are friend of foe and whether the next corner will mean a bomb, death or the shattering of limbs.

We convince ourselves that this is right and, just as importantly, effective.

But:

To the extent that biased military interventions shift the balance of power between conflict actors, we argue that they alter actor incentives to victimize civilians. Specifically, intervention should reduce the level of violence employed by the supported faction and increase the level employed by the opposed faction. We test these arguments using data on civilian casualties and armed intervention in intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2005. Our results support our expectations, suggesting that interventions shift the power balance and affect the levels of violence employed by combatants.

In layman's terms interventions increase civilians casualties rather than decrease them.

Supporting a faction’s quest to vanquish its adversary may have the unintended consequence of inciting the adversary to more intense violence against the population. Thus, third parties with interests in stability should bear in mind the potential for the costly consequences of countering murderous groups.

OK it's just one study and others may wish to challenge the findings but for me it's a reminder that, as ever, we should be careful what we wish for. And to understand that righteousness and good intentions alone do not suffice to put things right, you need a strategy that works too.

It seems to me that military intervention in Syria may increase civilian deaths. And if this is a definite risk (and leaving the moral issues to one side for now) what is needed to eliminate that risk so as to ensure our end is achieved?

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I want my government to be local, approachable and effective - not merely "efficient"

I recall Arnold Moore, the Managing Director of Knightsbridge Furniture Productions, explaining to me about BS5750 (for young folk that's ISO9000). It was roughly like this:

"You see Simon, I have to have BS5750 because I sell to hospitals. It means I can make good or bad furniture - but whichever it is is do it consistently."

I was reminded of this occasion by an item (I can't credit mutual back-slapping with the term "debate") on this morning's Today programme between Sir Michael Bichard and Prof Tony Travers from the LSE. The discussion was supposedly about "localism" (which presumably is why the BBC had a former Whitehall civil servant and a big government academic to comment) but focuses mostly on a strange beast called "Total Place". This wondrous innovation excites all the bureaucrats but is just another sad little attempt to join up the activities of different government "agencies" at the local level.

And the focus? you've guessed it - greater "efficiency". The same driver that created big national quangos, huge distant "unitary" authorities and the commoditisation of local services. The aim is to "deliver" those services very efficiently - a task that is achieved at the cost of any personality, variety or local interest. So-called "community consultation" replaces the ability of the ordinary resident to actually speak with someone who actually delivers the service that person wants to receive.

What we've lost in this drive for efficiency is a sense that services have to be effective - to aim to give to the resident what that resident actually wants from their government. We're told we should be pleased when a rubbish collection service gets an 80% satisfaction rating! That's one out of every five people who are not happy? If these services faced competition they would really struggle on those performance levels - regardless of their financial or operational efficiency (much of which as connoisseurs of the "Gershon Efficiencies" will know is fiction).

For all its hype "Total Place" is just an add on to LAAs, CAAs and all the recent paraphernalia of "joined-up" government. And the truth? Until we allow local control of decision-making across these areas - which means local control of police, health and environment - we will not get effective services. What we will get is an endless set of initiatives driven by cod efficiency and centre-focused bureaucratic culture.

A I've said before the real test of "localism" is when government gives local institutions back to the people. I'll believe the fat cats of central government's pontificating about "localism" when this happens and not before.