Congress regularly enacts laws that benefit particular groups or localities while imposing costs on everyone else. Sometimes, however, Congress breaks free of such parochial concerns and enacts bills that serve the general public, not just special interest groups. In this book, the author offers a theory that explains not only why special interest frequently triumph but also why the general public sometimes wins. By showing how legislative leaders build coalitions for both types of programs, he illuminates recent legislative decisions in such areas as economic, tax, and energy policy. The author's theory of policy making rests on a reinterpretation of the relationship between legislators' actions and their constituents' policy preferences. Most scholars explore the impact that citizens' existing policy preferences have on legislators' decisions. They ignore citizens who have no opinions because they assume that uninformed citizens cannot possibly affect legislators' choices. Arnold examines the influence of citizens' potential preferences, however, and argues that legislators also respond to these preferences in order to avoid future electoral problems. He shows how legislators estimate the political consequences of their voting decisions, taking into account both the existing preferences of attentive citizens and the potential preferences of inattentive citizens. He then analyzes how coalition leaders manipulate the legislative situation in order to make it attractive for legislators to support a general interest bill
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12 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a book which questions democratic accountability in congress,
This review is from: The Logic of Congressional Action (Paperback)
According to John G. Geer, a textbook account of a representative democracy is that representatives attempt to translate the public's view into governmental action. Legislators are supposed to represent and act on the interests of the electorate. Gere cites Edmund Burke's distinction between `trustee' democracy, in which politicians lead public opinion, and `delegate' democracy, in which politicians follow the public's will. Jean-Jacaques Rousseau believed that, ''the deputies of the people are not representatives; they are merely its agents". He expressed extreme cynicism regarding the British system of representation: "The English people believes itself to be free. It is greatly mistaken; it is free only during the election of the members of parliament, Once they are elected, the populace is enslaved; it is nothing." To the extent that Arnold's theory of Congressional behavior suggests that it is more necessary for legislators to identify issues that could make them vulnerable to challengers and to find the safe margin of decision making than for them to strictly adhere to the constituency opinion in roll-call voting, the US representative system seems to fall under `trustee' democracy, and is antidemocratic in the Rousseauian sense.
0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boring, Pointless and Long,
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This review is from: The Logic of Congressional Action (Paperback)
I would not recommend this book to anyone based on the writing style or conclusions drawn (I disagree with the author on many points). However, there is a lot of research that goes into this book, and it has some value because of that.
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First Sentence:
Why does Congress enact the policies that it does? Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, New York, United States, Congressional Quarterly Almanac, Social Security, Brookings Institution, President Reagan, New Haven, Yale University Press, President Carter, American Political Science Review, Elizabeth Wehr, Government Printing Office, Congressmen's Voting Decisions, Gucci Gulch, Historical Tables, Senate Finance Committee, Supreme Court, American Enterprise Institute, President Nixon, Pamela Fessler, Allen Schick, Dale Tate, World War, Federal Tax Policy New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Why does Congress enact the policies that it does? Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, New York, United States, Congressional Quarterly Almanac, Social Security, Brookings Institution, President Reagan, New Haven, Yale University Press, President Carter, American Political Science Review, Elizabeth Wehr, Government Printing Office, Congressmen's Voting Decisions, Gucci Gulch, Historical Tables, Senate Finance Committee, Supreme Court, American Enterprise Institute, President Nixon, Pamela Fessler, Allen Schick, Dale Tate, World War, Federal Tax Policy New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 83
books:
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100
books
cite this book:
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- Federal Income Tax by John F. Witte on 8 pages
- Federal Tax Policy (Studies of Government Finance) by Joseph A. Pechman on 7 pages
- Congress: The Electoral Connection, Second Edition by Professor David R. Mayhew on 7 pages
- Energy Policy (A Contemporary affairs report) by Inc. Congressional Quarterly on 7 pages
- Politics of Congressional Elections (Longman Classics Series), The (6th Edition) by Gary C. Jacobson on 6 pages
See all 83 books this book cites
- The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States by Jacob S. Hacker on 6 pages
- The Campaign Continues: How Political Consultants and Campaign Tactics Affect Public Policy by Douglas A. Lathrop on 5 pages
- Amici Curiae and Strategic Behavior in State Supreme Courts by Scott A. Comparato on page 19, page 54, and Back Matter
- The Political Life of Medicare (American Politics and Political Economy) by Jonathan Oberlander in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Overruled?: Legislative Overrides, Pluralism, and Contemporary Court-Congress Relations by Jeb Barnes on page 25, page 49, and page 75
See all 100 books citing this book
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