Single issues, multiple problems

Weekly Updates

Recent years have seen political party membership decline as people engage in “single issue” politics, often via social media. The issue that is trending on social media today becomes the focus for political leaders tomorrow.
This risks economic stability. The future becomes increasingly uncertain. Who knows what will trend on TikTok next week? Pre-determined policy paths risk being replaced by whatever gets the most heart emojis. Single issue politics captures breadth, not depth (someone laconically clicking “like” has the same impact as someone passionately stabbing the “like” button). This means that things that are relatively unimportant can still dominate politics.
A further risk is that policies contradict each other. Manifesto-based policies may not be completely coherent, but there is at least a pretense that they align. Single issue politics focuses on narrow objectives, one at a time, and ignores other consequences.
For instance, focusing on local food (“food miles”) may reduce food’s environmental transport costs, but increases the environmental cost of food production. Taxing trade to encourage domestic production in one sector may push up prices and weaken spending and production in other sectors. This then requires new single-issue policies to remedy the problems created by old single-issue policies—a political game of whack-a-mole that spirals out of control.