After any human disaster caused by people who wield political power, there is almost always a bunch of utopian dreamers who argue that the disaster could have been avoided if only good people held such power. Power, if held by good people with good intentions, can lead to good things for all, they say. Many former supporters of the socialist regime in Venezuela, for instance, argue that socialism failed to work in the country only because it was hijacked by power-hungry people. If not for these greedy people, they say, socialism would have worked in the erstwhile Soviet Union and China as well.
Very little thought, however, goes into why it is often the worst among men who get to occupy charge of positions of power and misuse it. In fact, most good and decent men who wish to do good for others try to avoid rather than embrace positions of power.
“Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service: Evidence from India”, a 2017 paper by Rema Hanna and Shing-Yi Wang published in the American Economic Journal, provides evidence that it is indeed the worst among people who get attracted to power. The authors find that students “who cheat on a simple laboratory task are more likely to prefer public sector jobs”. They further argue that cheating on the task they study predicts future corruption among civil servants.
So what is it about power that tends to attract towards it the worst among all people?
For one, since power involves the use of coercive force, rather than peaceful and voluntary interaction, it tends to attract people who have a preference for bullying others into submission. In fact, Hanna and Wang in their study find that students with pro-social preferences were “less likely to prefer government jobs”. People with anti-social preferences, of course, are less likely to use their coercive powers for the good of society either.
Typically, one could still argue that good people when given coercive powers can nevertheless use it towards achieving the good of society. But, as public choice economists would argue, such good men are quite likely to lose out to the bad ones in the race for power. This is because while the good people may fight for power to do good for society, bad people pursue power to do good for themselves, which in turn makes them more ruthless in their pursuit of power.