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Jonathan Rauch

Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working Paperback – December 23, 1999

by Jonathan Rauch (Author)

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An earlier edition of this extraordinarily prescient, elegantly written book created a sensation among Washington media insiders when it was published more than five years ago under the title Demosclerosis. In it, Jonathan Rauch, a former correspondent for The Economist and a columnist for National Journal, showed with startling clarity the reasons why America's political system (and, in fact, other political systems as well) was becoming increasingly ineffective. Today, as Rauch's predictions continue to manifest themselves in a national politics of "sound and fury" and little effective legislation, and in increasing voter cynicism, this book has achieved renown as the classic and essential work on why politics and government don't work. In Government's End, Rauch has completely rewritten and updated his earlier work to reassess his theory, analyze the political stalemate of the last few years, and explain why sweeping reform efforts of the kind led by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich aren't the answers. He also looks ahead at what is likely to happen -- or not happen -- next, and proposes ideas for what we must do to fix the system. For anyone who cares about the health of American democracy -- and indeed of international security -- Government's End is a fascinating, disturbing, and vitally important book.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

PublicAffairs
Publication date

December 23, 1999
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1891620495
ISBN-13

978-1891620492
Lexile measure

1190L
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At a big press dinner one night in early 1985, when I was settling into my first job in Washington, I found myself sitting next to a man who was a lot more interesting than the official speaker at the rostrum. In person, David Stockman, the architect of the "Reagan Revolution," was as brilliant as his reputation, but what was most striking was his candid bitterness. Stockman had come to Washington, with Ronald Reagan, determined to change things. But he had failed, and he knew it. They had failed.

Over the next few years, I encountered a few other young reformers. One was the earnest and deeply knowledgeable governor of Arkansas. Bill Clinton's mastery of the inner workings of government policy was astonishing. Ask him about health or welfare or education, and his answers combined the savvy of a politician with the knowledge of a bureaucrat. Then there was an obscure but ambitious young Turk congressman by the name of Newt Gingrich. I'll never forget this starry-eyed back-bencher explaining to a gaggle of conservative activists how Washington could be changed--if only you'd think "outside the box."

Clinton and Gingrich, as I saw first-hand, had brains, talent, determination. They both attempted "revolutions" to rival Stockman's. And they both failed, each more spectacularly than the last. This book revisits the ideas that I first published in my book Demosclerosis, which suggested that Washington's disease is more complex and cunning than even a Clinton or a Gingrich realized. The new edition has a new title, because it is partly a new book. The earlier ideas are here, but I've also tried to account for the experiences of the 1990s--and to peer into the future, where a new relationship between the people and their government is taking shape.

About the Author

Acclaimed as the smartest young political journalist in Washington, Jonathan Rauch writes a bi-weekly column for National Journal and contributes widely to other magazines and journals. A graduate of Yale University, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America and concluded that democracy's Achilles' heel was tyranny of the majority. "The majority in the United States has immense actual power and a power of opinion which is almost as great," he said. "If freedom is ever lost in America, that will be due to the omnipotence of the majority driving the minorities to desperation and forcing them to appeal to physical force." But democracy, here and elsewhere, has not succumbed to majoritarian tyranny. In fact, America has probably done a better job protecting minorities than any other society in history.

A hundred years after Tocqueville, many people worried that democracy's vulnerability lay in its lack of resolve in the face of totalitarianism. Dictators, after all, could make decisions almost instantaneously, while democratic institutions dithered and deliberated. That fear, too, was misplaced. American democracy saw the dictators to their graves. It saw the Cold War through in a display of consistency and resolve which history can hardly match. Dithering democracies turned out to have the better side of the deal: they turned out to be much better than dictatorships at finding and correcting their mistakes before mistakes became cataclysms.

Today it appears that democracy's truer vulnerability lies closer to home--in the democratic public's tendency to form ever more groups clamoring for ever more goodies and perks and then defending them to the death. Free and stable societies, it seems, tend to drift toward economic cannibalism and governmental calcification, unless they make a positive effort to fight the current....

One reason democracy wasn't done in by majoritarian tyranny or by the dictators' resolve was that people became worried about both threats, and so managed to defeat them. The current threat is more insidious. It operates quietly and slowly from within, giving us no belligerent "them" to bravely stand up to--no majoritarian lynch mobs with nooses, no implacable Stalins with armies. It is a crisis of American appetites.

This book is not an apocalyptic tirade. It is not about the imminent death of American civilization or democracy or prosperity; I believe in no such thing. It is, rather, about a profound change in American society and behavior over the past thirty or so years which is compromising Americans' ability to govern ourselves and to solve common problems. It is an attempt to show how American society has reordered itself so as to make politicians less and less able to meet the expectations of the citizenry. It is about a social game in which Americans have trapped each other: a game of beggar-thy-neighbor and get-mine-first that damages the economy and chokes the government.

We cannot cope with the game, and mitigate its ravages, until we understand how it captures and uses us. Resentful scapegoating of liberals, conservatives, government, business, foreigners, wealthy elites, the poor, politicians, and everyone else does no good at all. A nation of expectant whiners cannot see through the trap that I am about to describe.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs; First Edition (December 23, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1891620495
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1891620492
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1190L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,044,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,012 in Elections
- #1,286 in United States National Government
- #4,160 in History & Theory of Politics

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4.3 41 ratings

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Jonathan Rauch

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At about age 20, I realized that (1) I didn't have the talent to be a musician, and (2) I didn't have the concentration to specialize. Naturally, I became a journalist. My first managing editor, Joe Goodman, at the Winston-Salem Journal, used to say: "Everyone has a story to tell; your job is to find it." In my books, I tell stories about Japan, free inquiry, government sclerosis, gay marriage, sexual denial, political realism, and--most recently--why life gets better after 50. I've won the National Magazine Award and some other prizes and been called (wrongly) "doctor" and "professor." To me, though, the highest honorific is: journalist. For my official bio: www.jonathanrauch.com.

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A Book About Side-Effects!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2014

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With Government's End, Jonathan Rauch gives a good introduction to the world of public choice economics. In other words, it is a book about what happens when government programs create inducements for "special interest" groups to lobby. In other words, when governments get in the business of wealth transfers (via tarrifs, subsidies, tax breaks, etc), it is only rational for various groups - industry representatives, consumer groups, policy groups - to start lobbying in order that some of those transfers go their way.

But let's get something straight: Rauch is NOT doing the typical "let's complain about those special interests" thing, or a political rant targeting some special interests (but not others) as destroying America. Rauch is actually quite neutral in this book. So, first, the term "special interest" is, for Rauch, a misnomer, because any group who has any interest at all in getting any policy enacted (or maintained) constitutes an interest that is likely to lobby. Second, these interests are not (generally) lobbying to subvert the will of the American people, but often are simply fighting for causes they believe are worthy and acting quite rationally (seeing as other groups are lobbying, it would be foolish to be the group that doesn't). What we have, in econ-speak, is a tragedy of the commons, where it is in everyone's interest to do what they can to get resources funneled their way, but when everyone does that, it risks creating a net loss (more money spent lobbying overall than benefits won as a result of lobbying overall).

While this book was written in the mid-1990's, the examples Rauch uses of public choice economics in action are quite good. From the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administration's failed attempts to challenge "special interests" enough to fulfill promises to change government, to many a stubbornly persistent government policies protecting everything from agricultural subsidies to taxicab licenses and wool manufacture. And while the book is easily read by non-economists, Rauch introduces several key economic concepts from the public choice literature like how "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs" often lead to policies remaining in place even when they cause a net loss to society, and "churning" whereby government programs often give to group a while taking from group by while also taking from group b to give to group a.

It is worth stressing again that this is not meant to be a partisan book. Rauch goes out of his way to point out that special interest groups (and good-spirited attempts to transcend "special interest politics") come both from the left and the right. In fact, particularly since the book is NOT partisan, it is hard to read it without amplifying one's pessimism because, as Rauch describes it, the "tragedy of the commons" problem (they lobby, so others lobby, increasing the inducement of still others to lobby) seems pretty unsolvable. Just stop the wealth transfer programs that lead to lobbying? Too late for that. Enact strict campaign finance or anti-lobbying laws? Good luck getting a system where everyone seems to benefit from lobbying to do that. Just elect more strong-willed and honest representatives? Good representatives + system dependent on lobbying = good representatives realizing that the only way to do good is to accept lobbying.

Anyway, this is a really good book for those wanting to understand not why our system doesn't work, but how our system works. (Whether it does or doesn't work depends on where you sit.) As Rauch writes, this is a book about side-effects, how a result no one seemed to plan arose and keeps growing because of incentives built into our system of government.

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Robert Hayes

An updated version of "Demosclerosis" -- still relevant, and a must-read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

I can't even remember how I found out Jonathan Rauch and his book, DEMOSCLEROSIS, but my love of that book spurred me to read more by him. Now, I come to GOVERNMENT'S END which I, after purchasing, found out was a revised and updated version of the aforementioned DEMOSCLEROSIS. As such, I won't try to rehash my previous review, but provide a brief summary of the differences. The older book came in 1994, after one year of the Clinton presidency. This "current" one came in 1999, towards the end of his second term. The first halves of each book are pretty much the same, with some sporadic additions to account for changes since the initial publication (the sugar and farm subsidies, for instance). The second half is where the biggest changes were made. In the intervening five years, Republicans under the leadership of Newt Gingrich took control of the House and Clinton tried to push through a massive healthcare reform bill. These two events plus failed reform under Reagan form the bulk of the newly added chapter, in which Rauch assesses why reform failed in terms of the theory he put forth in this book's initial publication. The next biggest changes come in the last couple chapters, where he adjusts his attitude towards managing demosclerosis, and his recommendations for treating it (as opposed to the more optimistic "cure" in the previous edition). The title gets more of an explanation in these final chapters and doesn't mean that government will cease, but that it has reached a point where evolution isn't really possible, at least not like it was in the 30 years starting with the New Deal era. He also makes the point that the American public as a whole needs to make an attitudinal adjustment regarding how much they want government to do versus what is realistically achievable. Obviously, there have been unforeseen developments since 1999, but the argument the book puts forth (in either version) still holds up in my opinion. When faced with a choice between this and the previous version, I would recommend this one (because of the updated information), but both books have essentially the same message.

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willearnest

Unfortunately, even more accurate now than when it was written

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2013

Verified Purchase

The timeline for the book takes it through the Clinton years. However it's premise - that "special interests" are a form of parasite on our government - has only been borne out by the last decade. The author takes pains to make it clear that, regardless of your political views, in one form or another we are all parasites. Kind of like Senator Simpson's "300 million teats" remark. As a timely (as of this writing) example consider the Federal "Lifeline" program of providing cell phones to the poor. Laudable aim, but exploited not only by individuals who don't qualify but by companies who provide phones to them and collect the revenue from the Feds. No matter where you sit, the government provides a benefit at the long-term expense to the person who actually pays taxes.

The lobbying and legal interests in Washington (and in statehouses) forms the particular parasite economy. It wins no matter what outcome eventually prevails. And it shows no sign of slowing even though it is clearly more and more disconnected from the populace it is supposed to represent. As for the populace, it grows more dependent on government and at the same time feels more entitled to the various benefits it receives. Probably fair to say that the author doesn't paint a pretty picture, nor does he believe that the situation is going to change much for the better - although he has a few modest proposals (none of which have happened since the book was written).

All in all, his belief that "government" in the sense that we thought of it decades ago has probably "ended" - that's the meaning of the title. It could have been interpreted as "the objective of government" as well but isn't. The end is something akin to the metastatis of cancer - the parasites are devouring the host.

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Top reviews from other countries

Daniel Lucraft

Given me a new perspective on government

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

"The national interest is not always the sum of our single or special interests". - Jimmy Carter

Rauch ably explores the full, somewhat depressing depth of this quote. He shows that special interests today are largely us, and that assigning and blaming villains for our governments gridlock, as both liberals and conservatives do, is a guarantee that we will misunderstand the nature of late 20th century and 21st century government.

He hardly mentions the internet at all, because this book was written in the 90s, but it's not hard to see how the web only magnifies his points, and the book has not aged at all.

This is not a partisan book, despite what you may assume from the mood of the title.

Although it all makes perfect sense, and most of his ideas are clear and persuasive, I've yet to decide how much I believe his final conclusions. I'll also be thinking about how much this applies to my native UK and how much is specific to the US. But it's given me a new intuition pump to think about how government and politics work which I am going to make much use of. Recommended.

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