Politics is absolutely about policy design, but there are many many higher-order social emergent phenomena on top that obscure it.
Imagine you had an organization in Washington DC called "Other Congress". It has the same giant beautiful buildings as Congress. It has the same rules and and parliamentary procedure, the same number of members, the same election schedule. In other words, it is 100% identical to normal Congress. It even passes bills. Except... those bills have no force of law. It's all make believe.
That Other Congress would never attract any significant traction or participation.
Note that this sounds sort of like a shadow cabinet, but it's not. The whole point of a shadow cabinet is to act as a social mechanism for influencing the real cabinet.
It may be that an Other Congress would end up functioning sort of like a shadow cabinet. But even then, the only reason anyone would participate in it is to affect the real Congress, and the reason they do that is because real Congressional policy carries weight.
Imagine you had an organization in Washington DC called "Other Congress". It has the same giant beautiful buildings as Congress. It has the same rules and and parliamentary procedure, the same number of members, the same election schedule. In other words, it is 100% identical to normal Congress. It even passes bills. Except... those bills have no force of law. It's all make believe.
That Other Congress would never attract any significant traction or participation.
Note that this sounds sort of like a shadow cabinet, but it's not. The whole point of a shadow cabinet is to act as a social mechanism for influencing the real cabinet.
It may be that an Other Congress would end up functioning sort of like a shadow cabinet. But even then, the only reason anyone would participate in it is to affect the real Congress, and the reason they do that is because real Congressional policy carries weight.