Governing for the Long Term
Author | : Alan M. Jacobs |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 323 |
Release | : 2011-03-28 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781139496117 |
ISBN-13 | : 1139496115 |
Rating | : 4/5 (115 Downloads) |
Download or read book Governing for the Long Term written by Alan M. Jacobs and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Governing for the Long Term, Alan M. Jacobs investigates the conditions under which elected governments invest in long-term social benefits at short-term social cost. Jacobs contends that, along the path to adoption, investment-oriented policies must surmount three distinct hurdles to future-oriented state action: a problem of electoral risk, rooted in the scarcity of voter attention; a problem of prediction, deriving from the complexity of long-term policy effects; and a problem of institutional capacity, arising from interest groups' preferences for distributive gains over intertemporal bargains. Testing this argument through a four-country historical analysis of pension policymaking, the book illuminates crucial differences between the causal logics of distributive and intertemporal politics and makes a case for bringing trade-offs over time to the center of the study of policymaking.