Abstract
This book does two important things and deserves to be read by two different audiences. One thing it does is what it says in the title: give us a solid history and analysis of the United States' Social Security programme and its politics. We lacked an up-to-date political history of the programme, and it is helpful that this one speaks to social science debates. It makes a special point of attempting to evaluate the importance of racism and sexism in Social Security's politics, finding that racism does not explain much, while sexism is still only a complement to explanations focused on economic interests and institutional politics. It would be nice, though, if it were to take more account of broader trends in American welfare politics (its parallels with J. Oberlander's The Political Life of Medicare are striking).
The other thing the book does is what it hints in the subtitle: expand our understanding of the interaction of history and politics. This is why it should receive attention beyond those interested in the United States and pensions. Béland's framework is a synthesis of three schools of thought with very different origins: historical institutionalism (from comparative politics), frame analysis (from sociology) and multiple-streams analysis (from policy studies). He weaves them together into a much more coherent explanation of policy development and change over time than any one theory can supply alone. A synthesis such as his remedies their flaws and accentuates their strengths – historical institutionalism is coupled with theories that explain change; frame analysis is tied to concrete institutions and discrete policy ideas; and multiple-streams analysis is furnished with a rich institutional and framing background to explain the origins of the ideas and interests. The idea is excellent and Béland's particular execution of it sturdy, data friendly and generalisable.
Scott L. Greer
(University of Michigan)
This beautifully written book sheds new light on the founding moments of post-war international society. Borgwardt argues that the new multilateral order that emerged, comprising the Bretton Woods system of economic governance, the UN system of collective security and the Nuremberg charter that foreshadowed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, had their origins in American New Deal thinking. Too often, Borgwardt argues, historians read the present into the past, believing that the new institutions were core parts of the new Cold War. Instead, Borgwardt shows that in their proper context the genesis of these institutions lies in two sets of considerations, both tied to the New Deal. First, there was the commitment to fundamental freedoms most famously expressed by Roosevelt's ‘four freedoms’ and Cordell Hull's pithier ‘freedom from fear and want’. Second, there was the basically Keynesian view that freedom from fear and want was best achieved by government intervention and technical managerialism. A New Deal for the World charts the progress of these norms, which Borgwardt argues amounted to an internationalisation of New Deal ideas. It shows that, on the one hand, the zeitgeist of 1945 and experience of war turned many formerly ardent isolationists, such as Senator Vandenberg, into advocates of the new multilateralism by convincing them that, left unchecked, troubles overseas became troubles at home and that the United States must have been fighting for more than simply a return to the status quo. On the other hand, however, New Deal ideas could only be internationalised through a process of domestic and international negotiation. Borgwardt traces this process, showing that the emergence of consensus involved compromises on every corner. For example, while the Atlantic Charter had proclaimed every person's right to self-determination, by 1945 that had been circumscribed by strategic arguments that the US maintain militarised colonies in the Pacific and British and French arguments against decolonisation. Despite these compromises, the basic ideas continued to wield power: the Atlantic Charter became a rallying call, triggering the irresistible process of decolonisation; Nuremberg gave way to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which set benchmarks used by millions to lobby for subsequent change.
This volume is written in a conversational style and does not present its core argument and evidence in an overtly systematic fashion. While that might annoy some purists, it does mean that more people might read this excellent and important book. And that would be very welcome.
Alex Bellamy
(University of Queensland)
Can we understand and improve politics through an analysis of political rhetoric? Brock et al. believe we can. By using and amplifying Kenneth Burke's methodology for analyzing political rhetoric, they seek to describe America's politics, identify the origins of America's current political problems and predict its political future.
The authors take from Burke a framework that maps rhetorical utterances on to ideological positions by connecting interpretive concepts with the orientations of those positions to the status quo. For example they argue that radicals, because they favor changing the status quo by intensifying the historical ‘drift’ of change that informs contemporary policies, emphasize concepts that describe the ‘agency’ by which change occurs. The authors use this method to describe the contours of political conflict in America and to situate the ideological characteristics of a variety of politicians, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John McCain.
They also urgently call for the joining of rhetoric with ideology to clarify policy orientations and allow citizens to agree on a political agenda. They blame current failures consistently to create such a fusion for the fragmentation and endemic conflict of contemporary American politics. Combining rhetoric with ideology would enhance democratic control, provide the foundations for agreement and allow political leaders to solicit a true mandate for governing, they argue. Brock et al. predict that the shift in the dominant paradigm from science to ‘poetic humanism’ will continue to tear apart popular understandings of key political concepts. Coupled with an inevitable cyclical change away from conservatism, this conceptual destruction will probably usher in a left-of-center policy ‘drift’ in America because, they imply, leftist ideologies are better situated to respond creatively to such change.
The book is written in a lively and accessible style and is suitable for advanced undergraduates and above. However, it is more suggestive than convincing. It largely ignores the pertinent political science literature on political communications, elections and related topics. I also believe Hayden White's Metahistory better conceptualizes the rhetorical organization of shared narratives than does the authors' interpretation of Burke's functional approach. More fundamentally, its central argument – that joining rhetoric with ideology will allow Americans to overcome fragmentation – underestimates other important political factors, including the tendency of American political structures to foment conflict and political division.
David J. Lorenzo
(Jamestown College)
In 1976 Gerald Pomper revived the genre of US election reviews which the Brookings Institution had abandoned after 1964. Although the Pomper series has now ended the field remains crowded and this fourth contribution from Ceasar and Busch is a serious competitor.
The book's title echoes the polarised electoral geography of the 2000 contest which divided the ‘50–50 nation’. But four years on, as the authors demonstrate in their opening chapter, Republicans now have the electoral advantage, extending through presidential, congressional and state elections. They also suggest that the electoral geography was less polarised in 2004, as Bush's largest gains came in the states where he was weakest four years earlier. The chapter on the Bush presidency traces both his performance and popularity. Inevitably 9/11 is seen as a watershed although the authors struggle to convince that the impact on the president's popularity endured to be of electoral significance in 2004. As they recognise, ‘once the rally effect from September 11th had finally run its course in mid-2003 he was largely back where he was on 10 September 2001’ (p. 62). The chapter on the Democrats’ nominating contest sees the speed of Kerry's victory as unhelpful to his electoral prospects. He had won the nomination unscathed and still largely unknown, allowing the Bush campaign to expose his shortcomings as soon as he had clinched the nomination. This argument is an interesting contrast to the view that a prolonged nominating contest leaves a party damaged for the general election. In discussing the general election the authors might have devoted more attention to what, for political scientists, were its curiosities: the lack of a convention ‘bounce’ for the Kerry campaign and why, despite his strength on most indicators used in electoral forecasting, Bush won by a narrow margin. The chapter on the congressional and state elections, covering hundreds of contests, understandably struggles to do more than describe the results. The final chapter provides an end-of-term report on the operation of election process, and an assessment of the parties' future prospects.
This book would be a useful addition to libraries for undergraduate use. The style is accessible and the authors are strong on description and analysis. Added illumination and historical value would have come from more statistical data. There is no record of the states' popular or electoral college votes or results for the presidential primaries and caucuses, for example.
Dean McSweeney
(University of the West of England)
Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner's The Politics of Attention probes into how the American political system processes information in producing public policies. In politics, it is important to understand how information is used and prioritized because information has a profound influence on the political process. Responding to new information, a political system produces various policy outcomes. In the process of adjusting to the new information, a political system can also transform itself. Despite the importance of information, the subject of information processing has often been treated incompletely in the literature.
Cognitively, human and institutional processing capacity is limited. Policy-makers are typically deluged with information; they cope with this ‘information-rich environment’ through ‘disproportionate information processing’. In other words, policy-makers cannot and thus do not respond proportionately to the strengths of incoming informational signals. Rather, they are selective in how they distribute their attention. Moreover, there are many institutional ‘frictions’ that resist change; an example is the requirement of concurrent majority support in both Houses to pass legislation. As a result, informationprocessing in politics is inevitably ‘inefficient’ and ‘disproportionate’.
These inefficiencies, however, are not pathologies. They are necessary characteristics that help guarantee reaction, error correction and democratic responsiveness. Indeed, Jones and Baumgartner conclude that this particular form of inefficiency is fundamental to the quality of American institutions, and should be encouraged.
In integrating the literature on agenda setting and institutional analysis, Baumgartner and Jones challenge students of public policy to rethink traditional concepts of governance and democracy. Their argument is based on stochastic analyses they conducted of the massive and comprehensive indices of the federal government. Their innovative methodological approach makes it possible to observe general trends across many cases, which would not have been possible with the more popular methods of regression analysis or detailed case studies of policy-making processes. Their work convincingly describes how the allocation of attention affects policy change.
While this book represents a solid and inspiring scholarly achievement, it also leaves many questions unanswered. How, for example, can we draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable ‘inefficiencies’? How can we encourage ‘necessary’ inefficiencies without putting the whole political system into gridlock? How does the responsiveness of institutions lead to action by individual actors? Both the richness of this book and the questions it leaves unanswered are likely to stimulate further discussion and debate related to American democracy.
Kyong Min Son
(University of Maryland)
This slim but densely packed volume presents the results of a two-stage survey of US elite opinion towards globalisation, broadly conceptualised economically, socially and ideologically. The analysis is based on two samples, drawn from sources such as Who's Who in America, collecting 900 responses in 1999 and 830 in 2003, the second following anti-globalisation protests and the destruction of the World Trade Centre.
The study conceives the reach of globalisation determined by the activities of those at the ‘cutting edge’, an elite subgroup. Via factor analysis of the 15 items of an ‘involvement index’ they identify such a subgroup, 187 and 167 respondents within their respective samples. The remainder of the text comprises a systematic exploration of differences in opinion between these ‘cutting-edgers’ and ‘other leaders’ in 1999 and 2003. Some light relief is provided at the start and end of each chapter with an imagined discussion of the results with two such global leaders, neighbouring passengers on a long-haul flight, but overly caricatured for great effect.
From the detailed review of 173+ items, the authors find that the ‘cutting-edgers’, those more deeply involved in global processes, are more enthusiastic about globalisation in its various manifestations but do not display a distinctive global mindset, as the researchers expected. Local, parochial, affiliations persist and their reactions to world events are indistinguishable from elite-wide patterns. Further, the study uncovers other significant elite subgroups such as Republican partisanship and favourable disposition towards globalisation and corporate viability among business leaders. While the opinions of occupational groups were found to be less distinctive than the cutting-edge/other dichotomy, this appears to arise from the particularly broad definition of globalisation employed; a more nuanced analysis of occupational and sectoral differences would be welcome.
The monograph aims to mobilise further research and it would be straightforward to align student research with this project. The questionnaires are appended and a link provided to access the original data online, although not operational for this review. The authors plan a third stage ‘post-Iraq’ and cite potential cross-country comparisons from Belgium and Turkey, developments that would help dilute the pervasive ethnocentrism in this study.
In sum, this project is yet to fulfil the expectations it raises. While this arises in part from the underpinning conceptual framework, the detail of opinion targeted presents potential for unprecedented access to the thinking of global elites, once a cross-national research programme is established.
Bruce Cronin
(University of Greenwich)
We welcome short reviews of books in all areas of politics and international relations. For guidelines on submitting reviews, and to see an up-to-date listing of books available for review, please visit http://www.politicalstudiesreview.org/.