Beyond Facts by IDB

Beyond Facts

The People’s Choice? The Role of Opinions in the Policymaking Process

dressing that issue may be more difficult to implement. A tardy response by politicians may waste a golden opportunity for reform. In the meantime, people become disenchanted by politicians’ tardy responses to what they see as their more-pressing needs. 25 Data from opinion polls about people’s satisfaction with certain public policies and the opinions of leaders on the most relevant problems facing their countries confirm that people and leaders do not always perceive problems with the same intensity. Moreover, people may react more rapidly to changes in certain variables, but become more quickly accustomed to the new levels after the changes than politicians do. 26 Reactions to the issue of crime are a dramatic case in point. Objective indicators, such as homicide rates, appall both people and leaders, as shown in Figure 9.1. However, people seem to react more intensely to more recent changes. This phenomenon seems to explain why the percentage of people who are dissatisfied Figure 9.1 Homicide Rates and Security with the level of violence is higher Perceptions of People and Leaders in Uruguay than in Colombia, even Colombia though the homicide rate in ColomEl Salvador bia is 15 times higher than that in Venezuela Uruguay. People also become used to high levels of violence, which exBrazil plains the relatively low level of conGuatemala cern in Colombia compared to that in Paraguay other countries. In both Uruguay and Ecuador Colombia, people may be reacting to Nicaragua change. Panama Leaders seem to understand Mexico better than the citizens they govern Argentina the differences between levels and Costa Rica change, which helps explain why Chile they are more concerned in ColomUruguay bia than in Uruguay about violence. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 However, in some cases they may reNumber of homicides per 100,000 people act more slowly to surges in violence. Percentage of leaders who consider violent Figure 9.1 shows the simple correlacrime one of top five problems tion between the objective indicaPercentage of people dissatisfied with security in their neighborhoods tors, in this case homicide rates, and how people (as measured in the GalSource: Authors' calculations based on Gallup (2007) and Consulta de San José (2008). lup World Polls) and leaders (as meaNote: Data on percentage of leaders considering violent crime a top-five problem not available for Nicaragua. sured by a survey of business and po-

Some hypotheses on why leaders may have a delayed response to a particular issue are (a) it takes time for information to accumulate; (b) people react more rapidly than statistics; (c) there is a status quo inertia and politicians are slow to respond; (d) rapid response may be seen as an argument showing that the government was not doing its job to begin with; and (e) leaders prefer to concentrate on more (politically) relevant issues and let others slip away over time.

26 Data are from Gallup and a survey conducted by the IDB for La Consulta de San José (2008), a joint effort of the Copenhagen Consensus and IDB that aimed to identify the 10 best ways to invest hypothetical money to address key development problems.

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