When policy moves substantially in one direction, aggregate public preference moves the other way, as though the public were signalling for less of what it is now getting.
Wlezien's 1995 model treats the public as expressing a preference for more or less relative to current policy rather than an absolute ideal. Spending rises, the public's stated appetite for spending falls, and the signal reverses. It explains why governments so often appear to lose public support for the programme they were elected to deliver, without anyone having changed their mind about the underlying goal.
In practice
- A government that delivers exactly what it promised faces polling that says the public wants the opposite.
- A firm that finally fixes the complaint it heard for years finds the complaints have moved to what it deprioritised.