Technopols
Last week, Mexico's federal electoral institute (IFE) was up in arms over a “cloning” scandal. Mexican electoral law states that politicians may not “politicize” the implementation of government programs by advertising them alongside photos of themselves. A creative mayor in the town of Toluca, a Mexico city suburb (actually located in the neighboring state of Mexico), decided to get around the law by using a stunt double, or “clone,” as the press has been referring to it. When questioned about the use of the clone, the mayor opined: he doesn't look that much like me….people say I am much better looking. The mayor has been roundly criticized for this end-run around election law, even by his own party, the PAN.
A few days after the scandal broke, Mexican daily REFORMA interviewed the man behind the mayor's publicity campaign. The publicist explained that he had used a local citizen who looked somewhat like the mayor, and then applied the magic of Photoshop to improve the similarities. Manifesting some irritation with the line of questioning, he noted that Photoshop was de rigeur in most modern advertising campaigns.
Of course, the use of technology to improve images is not normally illegal, so in this respect, the widespread use of Photoshop is irrelevant to the use of Photoshop in this case. On the other hand, the publicist, and the scandal itself, raise an important point: how useful are the strictures of Mexican electoral law in the face of changing technology, and given the nature of electoral politics? Today, it is a clone on a billboard; tomorrow, perhaps it will be technology that allows images to appear and disappear before anyone can bring them to the attention of the authorities. What if an army of clones was created to go from door to door to evade the advertising limitations? Does the government really have the capacity to monitor all of this? Should it spend valuable resources doing so?
Mexico's electoral rules can seem extreme to the outsider. They were developed to undercut a history of hyper-presidentialism, authoritarian clientelism, and personalism. The banning of images, like the prohibition on sitting presidents campaigning in favor of their potential successors, is designed to “purify” politics. But many of these rules are reactionary. While they wisely try to move politics away from the past, they are based on a naive ideal of politics that exists nowhere, least of all Mexico. All around the world, voters take cues from other politicians about who to vote for, make decisions on the basis of the appearance and gestures of political figures, and credit or blame politicians for the things which occur on their watch, even if there is no way they could have controlled them (e.g., international economic factors leading to domestic economic crisis).
Voters are always confronted with a myriad of dimensions over which to make choices, and only a few politicians from which to choose. They economize on information in a variety of ways, many of which lead them to prefer personalities or style over policy substance. In this respect, they are just like ordinary people, who do the same when making choices about friends, business partners, and lovers. For better or for worse, this is how we are. Denying voters information about politicians, such as what they look like, or what programs they want to take credit for, or what other politicians support them, ultimately reduces voter capacity to use heuristics (or short-hands), and forces politicians to become ever more clever about getting around the rules. The result is that everyone spends more resources, but there is no reason to expect that the quality of politics will improve.
After all, politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible. Voters will never have enough information, nor politicians enough capacity, to make elections entirely policy driven affairs in which voters choose the best menu over all relevant dimensions. Perceived qualities related to leadership, personality, demeanor, attitude and charisma will always matter at least as much as policy. Perhaps they should: if it is good enough for the voters, it might just be good enough for everyone else.
