The task of deliberating public policy falls preeminently to Congress. But decisions on matters ranging from budget deficits to the war with Iraq, among others, raise serious doubts about its performance. In Deliberative Choices, Gary Mucciaroni and Paul J. Quirk assess congressional deliberation by analyzing debate on the House and Senate floors. Does debate genuinely inform members of Congress and the public? Or does it mostly mislead and manipulate them? Mucciaroni and Quirk argue that in fashioning the claims they use in debate, legislators make a strategic trade-off between boosting their rhetorical force and ensuring their ability to withstand scrutiny. Using three case studies—welfare reform, repeal of the estate tax, and telecommunications deregulation—the authors show how legislators’ varying responses to such a trade-off shape the issues they focus on, the claims they make, and the information they provide in support of those claims. Mucciaroni and Quirk conclude that congressional debate generally is only moderately realistic and informed. It often trades in half-truths, omissions, and sometimes even outright falsehoods. Yet some debates are highly informative. Moreover, the authors believe it’s possible to improve congressional deliberation, and they recommend reforms designed to do so.
The standard wisdom among political scientists has been that "iron triangles" operated among regulatory agencies, the regulated industries, and members of Congress, all presumably with a stake in preserving regulation that protected the industries from competition. Despite almost unanimous agreement among economists that such regulation was inefficient, it seemed highly unlikely that deregulation could occur. Yet between 1975 and 1980 major deregulatory changes that strongly favored competition did take place in a wide range of industries. The results are familiar to airline passengers, users of telephone service, and trucking freight shippers, among others. Martha Derthick and Paul J. Quirk ask why this deregulation happened. How did a diffuse public interest prevail over the powerful industry and union interests that sought to preserve regulation? Why did the regulatory commissions, which were expected to be a major obstacle to deregulation, instead take the initiative on behalf of it? And why did influential members of Congress push for even greater deregulation? The authors concentrate on three cases: airlines, trucking, and telecommunications. They find important similarities among the cases and discuss the implications of these findings for two broader topics: the role that economic analysis has played in policy change, and the capacity of the American political system for transcending narrow interests.
The Legislative Branch examines Congress's performance as a democratic institution, identifies the forces that have shaped its development, and considers the prospects for effective reforms." "The Legislative Branch is a collection of essays by some of the nation's leading political scientists and scholars of public policy. It examines Congress's historical development; the effects of its electoral campaigns and outcomes; its internal structures, including party leadership and the committee system; its strengths and shortcomings in policymaking, including budgeting and foreign policy; its relations with the executive branch and the courts; its public support; and the dynamics of reform. Each essay analyzes long-term institutional developments, defines their implications for democratic governance, and spells out implications for reformers."--BOOK JACKET.
Federal regulatory agencies are often assumed to be excessively responsive to and influenced by the corporate interests they are supposed to regulate. On the basis of direct empirical examination, Paul Quirk challenges this assumption as it relates to four United States federal regulatory agencies. Through a series of interviews with high-level officials of the Federal Trade Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, he determines whether and what kinds of incentives exist to adopt policies favorable to industry. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational opportunities in wild areas. Countless commercial and government purveyors vigorously promoted the mystique of travel to breathtakingly scenic places, and roads and highways were built to facilitate such travel. By the early 1930s, New Deal public works programs brought these trends to a startling crescendo. The dilemma faced by stewards of the nation's public lands was how to protect the wild qualities of those places while accommodating, and often encouraging, automobile-based tourism. By 1935, the founders of the Wilderness Society had become convinced of the impossibility of doing both. In Driven Wild, Paul Sutter traces the intellectual and cultural roots of the modern wilderness movement from about 1910 through the 1930s, with tightly drawn portraits of four Wilderness Society founders--Aldo Leopold, Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, and Bob Marshall. Each man brought a different background and perspective to the advocacy for wilderness preservation, yet each was spurred by a fear of what growing numbers of automobiles, aggressive road building, and the meteoric increase in Americans turning to nature for their leisure would do to the country’s wild places. As Sutter discovered, the founders of the Wilderness Society were "driven wild"--pushed by a rapidly changing country to construct a new preservationist ideal. Sutter demonstrates that the birth of the movement to protect wilderness areas reflected a growing belief among an important group of conservationists that the modern forces of capitalism, industrialism, urbanism, and mass consumer culture were gradually eroding not just the ecology of North America, but crucial American values as well. For them, wilderness stood for something deeply sacred that was in danger of being lost, so that the movement to protect it was about saving not just wild nature, but ourselves as well.
Provocative in nature, this work looks critically at the bureaucratic infrastructure behind the U.S. federal government, from its origins as a self-governing republic in the 18th century to its modern presence as a centralized institution. This fascinating critique analyzes the inner workings of the American government, suggesting that our federal system works not as a byproduct of the U.S. Constitution but rather as the result of liberal and progressive politics. Distinguished academic and political analyst Paul D. Moreno asserts that errant political movements have found "loopholes" in the U.S. Constitution, allowing for federal bureaucracy—a state he feels is a misinterpretation of America's founding dogma. He contends that constitutionalism and bureaucracy are innately incompatible... with the former suffering to accommodate the latter. According to Moreno, the leadership of the United States strayed from the democratic principles of the early founders and grew to what it is today—a myriad of bureaucratic red tape couched in unreasonable policies. A straightforward, chronological narrative explains how non-elected bureaucrats became powerful political mavens in America. Each chapter covers several decades and features events spanning from the early history of the United States through coverage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) of 2010.
The Reputational Premium presents a new theory of party identification, the central concept in the study of voting. Challenging the traditional idea that voters identify with a political party out of blind emotional attachment, this pioneering book explains why party identification in contemporary American politics enables voters to make coherent policy choices. Standard approaches to the study of policy-based voting hold that voters choose based on the policy positions of the two candidates competing for their support. This study demonstrates that candidates can get a premium in support from the policy reputations of their parties. In particular, Paul Sniderman and Edward Stiglitz present a theory of how partisans take account of the parties' policy reputations as a function of the competing candidates' policy positions. A central implication of this theory of reputation-centered choices is that party identification gives candidates tremendous latitude in their policy positioning. Paradoxically, it is the party supporters who understand and are in synch with the ideological logic of the American party system who open the door to a polarized politics precisely by making the best-informed choices on offer.
Can the citizens of a democracy be trusted to run it properly? Modern political science has concentrated on cataloguing voters' failings--their lack of knowledge, tolerance, or consistency in political thinking. While it would be a mistake to think this portrait of citizens is simply wrong, it is a deeper mistake to accept it as a satisfactory likeness. In this book, Paul Sniderman demonstrates that a concentration on the pathologies of citizens' political thinking has obscured the intense clash of opposing belief systems in the electorate. He shows how a concentration on racism has distorted understanding of the politics of race by keeping out of sight those who think well of black Americans. And he exposes the fallacy of spotlighting the dangers of mass politics while ignoring those of elite politics.
From Sean Connery to Roy Rogers, from comedy to political satire, films that include espionage as a plot device run the gamut of actors and styles. More than just "spy movies," espionage films have evolved over the history of cinema and American culture, from stereotypical foreign spy themes, to patriotic star features, to the Cold War plotlines of the sixties, and most recently to the sexy, slick films of the nineties. This filmography comprehensively catalogs movies involving elements of espionage. Each entry includes release date, running time, alternate titles, cast and crew, a brief synopsis, and commentary. An introduction analyzes the development of these films and their reflection of the changing culture that spawned them.
While textbooks often describe an idealized model of "how a bill becomes law" and journalists emphasize special interest lobbying and generous campaign contributions to Congress, these approaches fail to convey -- much less explain -- the tremendous diversity in political processes that shape specific policies in contemporary Washington. Pathways of Power provides a framework that integrates the roles of political interests and policy ideals in the contemporary policy process. This book argues that the policy process can be understood as a set of four distinctive pathways of policymaking -- pluralist, partisan, expert, and symbolic -- that draw upon different political resources, appeal to different political actors, and elicit unique strategies and styles of coalition building. The book's use of a wide universe of major policy decisions provides a useful foundation for students of the policy process as well as for policy practitioners eager to learn more about their craft.
These 53 enchanting true tales of lifesaving animal bravery will truly touch the heart and lift the spirits. For anyone who has ever cared for an animal, these stories teach an unforgettable lesson of courage, commitment, and the power of love.
Aesthetic Materialism: Electricity and American Romanticism focuses on American romantic writers' attempts to theorize aesthetic experience through the language of electricity. In response to scientific and technological developments, most notably the telegraph, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century electrical imagery reflected the mysterious workings of the physical mind as well as the uncertain, sometimes shocking connections between individuals. Writers such as Whitman, Melville, and Douglass drew on images of electricity and telegraphy to describe literature both as the product of specific economic and social conditions and as a means of transcending the individual determined by such conditions. Aesthetic Materialism moves between historical and cultural analysis and close textual reading, challenging readers to see American literature as at once formal and historical and as a product of both aesthetic and material experience.
How can international monetary stability be promoted? This study looks at ways to bolster economic policies and coordination among the industrial countries serving as nominal anchors for the world economy. It also assesses the operation of monetary unions and common currency areas. The authors conclude that problems with the world monetary system reflect weaknesses outside the exchange rate arena, and that exchange rate commitements must be tailored to individual country characteristics.
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