Feigning Politicians

Politicians have limited ability to influence policy. This provides an incentive for politicians to feign a policy agenda: they publicly propose policies that voters demand but privately exert little effort toward progressing such policies. This feigning behavior is more likely to occur when the politician's preferred agenda is close to the status quo or when the politician is an ineffective legislator. My model predicts that under certain conditions, such as a trade shock, less effective legislators will be more likely to publicly support policies that voters demand and may be reelected with higher probability than more effective legislators.