Comment by Ericson2314
13 hours ago
The types of quotes get bandied about all the time, but I don't think they are accurate.
Politicians don't want to reduce their power, but politicians != governments. Lots of scary stuff actually empowers the civil service more than it empowers politicians. The main way politicians loose power is also not by the nature of the job changing, but by loosing elections.
Do you live in a parliamentary democracy? If not, you may be unaware that in those systems (like Canada and the United Kingdom), the ruling party is referred to as ‘the government’.
There are many western democracies where there no single ruling party. 'The government' is made by an alliance of many different parties (eg: 25% + 15% + 10% + 5%.) They might share a common overall view of the world but each party can have a very different take on many subjects. The actual government has to do only what all of them agree upon, and the 5% party may have a disproportionate weight because that party leaving the government is as important as the 25% party leaving it.
So, the government is the people in the government and the small parties can be very vocal against it. Opposition from inside is a double edged tool to attempt to get more votes in the next elections, even from within the same coalition.
This is not working. A few decades later the biggest party is like 50% of the politicians.
My theory is that power accumulates like money so you end up having few people with all the power. It's not that original, I must've read it somewhere.
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> main way politicians loose power is also not by the nature of the job changing, but by loosing elections
This isn't true most actually gain more power because once you're out of the frankly trash job of being the figurehead of the country you can then take advantage of all the deals, favors and contacts you made doing it then move into NGOs/thinktanks/board position at meta/etc and start actually making real money and having real influence without the eyes on you.