Public Politics in an Authoritarian State

"Competitive politics subjected Soviet policy making to the same inefficiencies that plague policy making in an electoral society. Policies are inefficient for two reasons: (a) politicians build constituencies by symbolic appeals that supplant objective problems as the targets of policy and (b) successful competitors resolve their disagreements over policy by logrolling their respective policy proposals regardless of whether the resulting policies are mutually compatible in the real world. Substitution of symbolism for reality in policy-making combines with logrolling of mutually incompatible policies to inflict high costs on the citizenry of an electoral polity, but the polity persists despite the inefficiency of its policies because most citizens are partisans."