Abstract
The study of the United States Congress has focused on the interactions of individual members of Congress and their ability to get re-elected and stay in office; and how bills work their way through the legislative process. John Baughman's new work combines the best of previous research and focuses on committee interaction and jurisdiction to tell a different story of life on Capitol Hill. His book provides an interesting and unique look at ‘turf wars’ and committee jurisdiction by introducing a transaction cost model most often found in economics, and turning common wisdom on its side by suggesting that committees are more likely to cooperate than fight over multiply referred bills and jurisdictional overlaps.
Baughman's major contribution is to take our understanding of committee politics to a new level by changing the focus of our theory and analysis. By implementing the transaction cost model and linking the traditional political science literature on the process by which bills are assigned to committees and how committees negotiate with each other over Rule X jurisdictional issues, he helps us to understand how often committees, chairs and staff members want to cooperate to ensure legislative success. To make his point, he uses a unique process of coding and analysing waiver letters written between committee chairs to release jurisdiction in favour of another committee with an overlapping interest (p. 69). This original analysis, coupled with interviews with committee staff members, makes his understanding more comprehensive than other analyses that use only qualitative or quantitative data.
Overall, Baughman is successful in creating a book that appeals directly to both American congressional scholars and legislative scholars who want to understand the bill-referral and jurisdictional challenges that have existed in Congress since the reform movement of the 1970s. However, while there is a discussion about the role of party in the reform movements of 1974 and 1994, I would have liked a greater discussion of the role that party played in the ‘turf wars’ between committees, and whether there is a difference between Republican and Democratic members of Congress and how they treat their colleagues.
In short, this is a well-written and thoughtful book that challenges the current understanding of committee jurisdiction and referrals. Baughman should be commended for taking the initiative in creating a new and interesting way to analyse a question that has long interested congressional scholars.
Jacob R. Straus
(Frostburg State University)
Scholarship is divided about how pervasive and deep a cultural conflict runs through American political life. Simplistically, one side argues that such conflict is nominal, fleeting and inconsequential (at most), while the other side argues that it is pervasive, sustained and virtually all-encompassing. Brewer and Stoneclash set out to discover where the truth lies: ‘The purpose of Split is to determine the extent to which cultural issues and class concerns shape contemporary American politics’ (p. xiv). The subtitle explains clearly the major thesis of the work, and throughout, Brewer and Stoneclash show clearly that while culture receives much attention for its influence on voting habits, one should not ignore or reduce the role of class. Thus, they do not diminish (at least explicitly or pervasively) the role of culture for informing political views, but they provide strong evidence that this is not the whole picture, and indeed is probably less than half.
Split corrects numerous widely held assumptions (at least in popular terms) regarding voting habits and candidate and party platforms. The authors have backed up all of their major claims with over 70 tables and figures, covering a wide variety of issues and questions, principally related to voting patterns and the US economy and rights issues, with a special concentration on abortion and homosexual rights. I was pleasantly surprised to find a book this brief (a mere 186 pages of main text) which provides such analytical depth. It is a credit to the authors and a benefit to all readers that Split offers such skilful research in such limited space. Additionally, readers will be grateful for the substantial topical index and thorough endnotes.
In sum, Split is engaging, cogent and a concise study of the current state of American politics and voting patterns, which should be used widely (probably as a supplement) in undergraduate courses, whether the focus is church–state relations, elections, candidates and parties, voting trends and behaviours or public opinion. Brewer and Stoneclash accomplish their task with a measured, sustained and informed argument that will convince most. American politics is messy, with class and culture pervading and informing each other in ways that are hard to disentangle. To its credit, Split does not pass over such messiness, but rather acknowledges it, and in so doing it provides a dose of clarity.
Ryan A. Neal
(Anderson University)
When Judge Robert Bork was rejected by the US Senate for a seat on the Supreme Court, he denounced the contemporary politicisation of the Court and the absence of neutrality in making appointments. Bork's views are symbolic of many of the Court's critics, who deride it for breaking from a past age (before the 1960s) where appointments were made independently of political ideology and squarely on merit.
In a stinging rebuke of these critics, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal powerfully and robustly reject this view and they argue that appointments to the Court have been anything but politically neutral. Advice and Consent is a sheer treasure trove of priceless facts and information about virtually every aspect of the appointments process. While they focus on the past half-century, its findings apply equally to all appointments since at least 1800. The book is beautifully written, impeccably researched and thoroughly engaging: I simply could not put it down once I began reading it.
Epstein and Segal conclusively demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that the perceived political ideology of potential candidates for federal benches (and not just the Supreme Court) is central to their selection. This is not simply to say that conservative presidents select conservative judges, although this is often the case. Instead, presidents of all stripes factor in political ideology, although also important are the composition of the Senate and the degree to which the president is willing to compromise with senators on appointments. Epstein and Segal provide any number of clear tables and evidence that demonstrate beyond question that appointments to the Court are political and always have been political. Critics, such as Bork, are incorrect to say that appointments to the modern Court operate essentially any differently than in the past.
This is the best book I have read about the Supreme Court. Both students approaching the study of the Court for the first time and scholars will benefit tremendously from Advice and Consent. It will surely become the canonical statement on judicial appointments and I recommend it without hesitation.
Thom Brooks
(University of Newcastle)
At the Borderline of Armageddon investigates how every American president since the Second World War has managed the atomic bomb and the resultant nuclear relations that have emerged since its inception. Goodby investigates in detail ‘issues that US Presidents have faced and how they dealt with them’ (p. x). Goodby's methodological approach to this difficult, controversial and extremely complex issue is straightforward and effective. The actions of each president, beginning with the embryonic collaboration between Roosevelt and Churchill and concluding with Bush Junior's ‘ballistic missile defence’ and ‘active non-proliferation’ doctrines (p. 181), are packaged into themed parts; each covering approximately ten years of nuclear history.
As well as presenting a detailed history of nuclear politics – from the American superiority of the 1940s to Soviet catch-up in the 1950s to rogue state proliferation in the 1990s – two important motifs are present throughout this book. The first motif concerns how the ambitious international goals of each president were often degraded by both domestic political pressures and ego clashes within kitchen cabinets. The second concerns the feasibility of defence against ballistic missiles and how this feasibility has developed over time. Goodby raises the implications this development holds for contemporary nuclear policy and the balance of power and he certainly deserves credit for tackling a difficult and controversial subject. His insights and unique factual contributions make nuclear history more exciting and frightening for the reader than many other books and clearly demonstrate his work history within the Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations. One feels, however, that such experience in Cold War politics may have clouded Goodby's study of the final president, George W. Bush. The implicit argument of this book appears to be that all the presidents did as well as they could, except Bush Jr, who is ‘overthrowing the old order’ (p. 179) through pre-emptive invasions of WMD countries and through development of the SDI. Perhaps Goodby's extensive Cold War experience has impressed negatively upon his analysis of a president subject to a set of circumstances quite different to those of his predecessors. Overall, however, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a personalised view of how the most powerful weapon in the world is managed within the United States. Game theorists would certainly benefit from reading how the emergence of rogue states and the resultant development of ballistic defence are modifying the status quo within the international system.
Mark Rice
(University of Coventry)
In Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care the author considers why US health care costs are rising so rapidly, trade-offs between different ways to pay for health care and ways to improve efficiency and equity in the health care system. Kling compares the health care system of 1975 with that of 2005, concluding that today Americans have ‘premium medicine’ – defined as a high standard and delivery of care based on the widespread use of diagnostic procedures and equipment, such as MRI machines, and the rapid growth of health care specialists. According to Kling, premium medicine has driven up the cost of health care and created a ‘crisis of abundance’. This new standard of care has become the norm and now society must find the means to pay for it. The author presents a cost–benefit analysis of premium medicine and argues that society can achieve only two of three potential goals: affordability of services, consumer access or consumer insulation from costs. Continuing efforts to extend life will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, with no incentives in place to reduce ever-rising costs. Kling believes the market fails to control rising costs because of US insurance practices which insulate consumers from knowing the true costs of consuming health care services and thereby increase consumption and the rise in health care industry profits. He also advocates the value of government-funded catastrophe insurance for the elderly.
Kling concludes that the American health care system will be paid for by a combination of government, private insurance and consumers. He proposes health care financing policies to include providing patients with incentives to use medical care more wisely (for consumers to be more accountable) and to create a better balance between discretionary and necessary medical procedures (for practitioners to be more accountable). He explores policy ideas such as creating a single point of accountability (namely the government), and creating a commission to study the cost-effectiveness of medical protocols and standard guidelines for medicine.
The book is well written, easy to understand and provides a simple explanation of how we got where we are. It also proposes some food for thought on ways to pay for the ‘abundance’ of health care services that have been created and to which people have become accustomed.
C. J. O'Connor
(Arizona State University)
These two books renew debate about the challenges posed to democratic governance by the forces of globalisation and the concomitant general trend towards adopting the two basic principles of New Public Management (NPM) – marketization and debureaucratization. They examine new concerns, tensions and dilemmas arising from the pressures generated by broader and complex patterns of democratic ‘governance’ in the twenty-first century, albeit mainly in the context of American democracy.
Meier and O'Toole Jr., examine the argument ‘that bureaucracy and its administrative apparatus limit the promise of democracy’. The authors re-examine the bureaucracy-democracy question by concentrating on the two major streams of the literature on the subject: (1) the ‘political control of bureaucracy’ literature from political science, and (2) the ‘normative bureaucratic values’ literature from public administration. Using empirical evidence from US national and local governments, they examine the result of bureaucratic and political interactions in specific government settings to determine whether bureaucratic systems strengthen or weaken the connection between public preferences and actual policies. The authors contend that studies have consistently fallen short of measuring bureaucratic values (such as regime values, agency values and social equity values) or the preferences of the electoral institutions. They then compare these values with actual policy actions over time to see if political institutions have influenced the results. The bureaucratic-values literature from within public administration, on the other hand, has focused most of its efforts on the question of values held by the bureaucracy. The authors seek to bridge the gulf between these two worlds from a ‘governance’ perspective focused on a need to consider both broader institutionally complex systems of governance and the details involved in managing bureaucracy.
They deduce three empirical lessons: (1) bureaucracy in the strict sense does not accurately characterise the implementation of settings of modern governance; (2) bureaucratic values are frequently more important than those of political overseers in driving policy and (3) even under almost optimal conditions for top-down control of the bureaucracy, bureaucracy can exert influence over policy outcomes in significant ways that are unintended by political leaders. Thus by relying on both political and bureaucratic representation, governance systems are more democratic than if they relied solely on top-down electoral influences.
In the same vein, Cook has attempted to link a comprehensive re-examination of Woodrow Wilson's classic ideas about democracy, government and administration to the current prominent thinking about Public Management, in order to reinforce the connection between the practical and immediate matters of administrative structure and managerial technique, and broader questions about design requirements and normative principles for a working regime. Cook contends that a significant legacy of Wilson's ideas and practices is the strong linkage that can be traced from his decisions and actions as president and the effects they had on ‘governing’ to the emergence of a public management orientation to theory and practice. The modern renewed focus on governance in public administration theory and practice is ‘the inevitable outcome of Woodrow Wilson's ideas and actions, particularly, his choices in conception and practice, to concentrate the political authority over administration, and the responsibility for interpreting public opinion to guide that political authority, almost wholly within the presidency’ (p. 220). In the now changed circumstances of the twenty-first century, however, Cook suggests that this peculiar kind of statesmanship might best be found among public administrators themselves than within the presidency.
Cook outlines three additional dimensions which he thinks would add to the current conception of the study of governance to produce something akin to the science of government. First, new governance raises serious normative questions which are central to the understanding of events in the newest stage of development of the modern democratic state. Second, the new forms and facets of public administration attempt to combine recognition of the vertical logic of governance with the horizontal and cross-boundary networking of the new administration and management. Third, to label the new and seemingly far-reaching developments in public administration of the past two or three decades a new kind of governance implies a sweeping conception of politics and government in a regime predicated on the idea of popular rule through representative institutions.
Despite upholding the importance of bureaucracy in democratic polities, both books suffer from the limitation of viewing democratic politics as a struggle between politics and bureaucracy, which is not necessarily so. Collusion between the two actors is implicit in the modern corporatist interpretations of politics. Apart from advanced states like the US, which forms the background of the two studies under review, Third World countries in recent times have provided an equally receptive environment for the development of bureaucratic power even beyond the ‘over developed’ conditions in which it was bequeathed by the colonial powers to the newly independent states. The findings of the two studies also suffer from another limitation. They seem to use the term ‘governance’ largely in its earlier narrow interpretation, to describe it as the ‘activity of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)’. However, it has now become a much broader concept, which is defined as the exercise of authority through formal and informal traditions and institutions for the common good.
Notwithstanding these limitations, both books present sophisticated insight into US government, while attempting to renew the search for a science of public administration, and represent valuable additions to the existing literature. They succinctly reinforce the basic principle of public accountability of management systems in democratic governments. At the same time they suggest thought-provoking new dimensions to be explored in further discussion within the framework of ‘governance’ or, rather, ‘good governance’.
R. B. Jain
(University of Delhi, India)
Young and Leuprecht's work examines the changing nature of governance and intergovernmental relations within the Canadian federation, with a strong focus on urban-federal governments in various provinces within Canada. This edited volume tackles such disparate subjects as ethnic diversity, municipal amalgamation and fiscal factors, as well as specific policy areas in several case studies, all brought together through an emphasis on multi-level relations between governmental actors. The editors identify four main themes of this research: (1) deep determinants of governmental change such as the growth of urban centres, technological change, global context and Canadian and regional values; (2) the rise of new public administration in Canada and the municipalities; (3) Europe, the multi-level governance perspective and its application in Canada; and (4) advocacy of urban issues by all governmental levels. Numerous authors in the collection deal with these themes, with deep determinants of change and the rise of new public administration getting the most significant attention in chapters dealing with issues such as ethnocultural diversity, housing policy and the role of the province in mediating federal/municipal relations.
An intriguing theme that can be further developed in future work is the application and use of the idea of multi-level governance in Canada in the same way it is utilised in European and British literature, as opposed to the more purely governmental approach of this work. In this particular volume, the first stage of a project examining multi-level governance in Canada, the focus remains on governmental relations, providing a concise and well-rounded view of how governmental levels – especially federal and municipal governments – interact. Some of the contributions – notably Berdahl's discussion of ad hoc and fluid agreements between federal and urban levels, Hamel and Rousseau's look at governmental decentralisation and Dunn's look at non-mediated federal/municipal interaction – delve a little deeper into the governance debate as envisaged in European and British literature. These chapters reveal some interesting and relevant directions in which further study can develop, namely in ‘governmental steering’ and the involvement of non-governmental actors in new, more flexible governance interactions. As it stands, the book provides a good starting point for future examination of how Canadian intergovernmental relations fit into the wider rubric of governance identified in multi-level governance literature, with room for further examination of the involvement of non-governmental actors and the fluid and changing nature of political interactions that are often based around policy as well as governmental concerns.
Dion Curry
(University of Sheffield)
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