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The Logic of American Politics 9th Edition
The Logic of American Politics 9th Edition
Samuel Kernell, Gary C. Jacobson, Thad Kousser, Lynn Vavreck
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Why does the American political system work the way it does?
Find the answers in The Logic of American Politics. This best-selling text arms you with a toolkit of institutional design concepts―command, veto, agenda control, voting rules, and delegation―that help you recognize how the American political system was designed and why it works the way it does. The authors build your critical thinking through a simple yet powerful idea: politics is about solving collective action problems.
Thoroughly updated to account for the most recent events and data, the Ninth Edition explores the increase in political polarization, the growing emotional involvement people have to politics, Americans’ reactions to changing demographics, the partisan politics of judicial selection, and the changing nature of presidential leadership. Revised to include the 2018 election results and analysis, this edition provides you with the tools you need to make sense of today’s government.
Find the answers in The Logic of American Politics. This best-selling text arms you with a toolkit of institutional design concepts―command, veto, agenda control, voting rules, and delegation―that help you recognize how the American political system was designed and why it works the way it does. The authors build your critical thinking through a simple yet powerful idea: politics is about solving collective action problems.
Thoroughly updated to account for the most recent events and data, the Ninth Edition explores the increase in political polarization, the growing emotional involvement people have to politics, Americans’ reactions to changing demographics, the partisan politics of judicial selection, and the changing nature of presidential leadership. Revised to include the 2018 election results and analysis, this edition provides you with the tools you need to make sense of today’s government.
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2019
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9
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CQ Press
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english
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1332
ISBN 10:
1544322992
ISBN 13:
9781544322995
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The Logic of American Politics Ninth Edition To Dianne, Marty, Kate, and Jeff The following dedication to James Madison is from the oldest American government textbook we have found: William Alexander Duer’s Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States, published in 1833. To you, Sir, as the surviving member of the august assembly that framed the Constitution, and of the illustrious triumvirate who, in vindicating it from the objections of its first assailants, succeeded in recommending it to the adoption of their country; to you, who, in discharging the highest duties of its administration, proved the stability and excellence of the Constitution, in war as well as in peace, and determined the experiment in favor of republican institutions and the right of self-government; to you, who in your retirement, raised a warning voice against those heresies in the construction of that Constitution which for a moment threatened to impair it; to you, Sir, as alone amongst the earliest and the latest of its defenders,—this brief exposition of the organization and principles of the National Government, intended especially for the instruction of our American youth, is most respectfully, and, in reference to your public services, most properly inscribed. Columbia College, N.Y. August 1st, 1833. The Logic of American Politics Ninth Edition Samuel Kernell University of California, San Diego Gary C. Jacobson University of California, San Diego Thad Kousser University of California, San Diego Lynn Vavreck University of California, Los Angeles FOR INFORMATION: CQ Press An Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: order@sagepub.com SAGE Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 India SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd. 18 Cross Street #10-10/11/12 China Square Central Singapore 048423 Copyright © 2020 b; y CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. CQ Press is a registered trademark of Congressional Quarterly Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, no part of this work may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All third party trademarks referenced or depicted herein are included solely for the purpose of illustration and are the property of their respective owners. Reference to these trademarks in no way indicates any relationship with, or endorsement by, the trademark owner. Printed in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kernell, Samuel, 1945- author. Title: The logic of American politics / Samuel Kernell, Gary C. Jacobson, Thad Kousser, Lynn Vavreck. Description: 9th edition. | Thousand Oaks, California : CQ Press/SAGE, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018055112 | ISBN 9781544322995 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Politics and government—Textbooks. Classification: LCC JK276 .K47 2020 | DDC 320.47301—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055112 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Executive Publisher: Monica Eckman Acquisitions Editor: Lauren Schultz Content Development Editor: Anna Villarruel Editorial Assistant: Sam Rosenberg Production Editor: Tracy Buyan Copy Editor: Mark Bast Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Sue Schon Indexer: Maria Sosnowski Cover Designer: Anthony Paular Marketing Manager: Erica DeLuca Brief Contents 1. Preface 2. A Note to Students 3. Chapter 1 • The Logic of American Politics 4. Part I. The Nationalization of Politics 1. Chapter 2 • The Constitution 2. Chapter 3 • Federalism 3. Chapter 4 • Civil Rights 4. Chapter 5 • Civil Liberties 5. Part II. The Institutions of Government 1. Chapter 6 • Congress 2. Chapter 7 • The Presidency 3. Chapter 8 • The Bureaucracy 4. Chapter 9 • The Federal Judiciary 6. Part III. The Public’s Influence on National Policy 1. Chapter 10 • Public Opinion 2. Chapter 11 • Voting, Campaigns, and Elections 3. Chapter 12 • Political Parties 4. Chapter 13 • Interest Groups 5. Chapter 14 • Media 7. Part IV. Conclusion 1. Chapter 15 • Is There a Logic to American Policy? 8. Reference Material 9. Glossary 10. Notes 11. Index 12. About the Authors Detailed Contents Preface A Note to Students Chapter 1 • The Logic of American Politics The Importance of Institutional Design Constitutions and Governments Authority versus Power Institutional Durability The Political System’s Logic Collective Action Problems Coordination The Prisoner’s Dilemma Logic of Politics: Hobbes on Monarchs The Costs of Collective Action Transaction Costs Conformity Costs Representative Government The Work of Government Politics to Policy: Fire Protection: From a Private to a Public Good Collective Action and America’s Constitution Nota Bene Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Part I: The Nationalization of Politics Chapter 2 • The Constitution The Road to Independence A Legacy of Self-Governance Dismantling Home Rule The Continental Congresses The Declaration of Independence America’s First Constitution: The Articles of Confederation The Confederation at War The Confederation’s Troubled Peace Drafting a New Constitution Philosophical Influences Getting Down to Business The Virginia and New Jersey Plans The Great Compromise Designing the Executive Branch Logic of Politics: Checks and Balances in the Constitution Designing the Judicial Branch Substantive Issues Politics to Policy: Why Women Were Left Out of the Constitution Amending the Constitution Strategy and Choice: Logrolling a Constitution The Fight for Ratification The Federalist and Antifederalist Debate The Influence of The Federalist The Theory Underlying the Constitution Federalist No. 10 Federalist No. 51 Designing Institutions for Collective Action: The Framers’ Tool Kit Command Veto Agenda Control Voting Rules Delegation Assessing the Constitution’s Performance in Today’s American Politics Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 3 • Federalism American-Style Federalism Evolving Definitions of Federalism Federalism and the Constitution Transformation of the Senate Constitutional Provisions Governing Federalism Interpreting the Constitution’s Provisions Strategy and Choice: Chris Christie and an Ambitious Governor’s Dilemma The Paths to Nationalization Historic Transfers of Policy to Washington Nationalization—The Solution to States’ Collective Dilemmas Politics to Policy: Free Federal Dollars? No Thanks, I’ll Take Political Currency Instead The Political Logic of Nationalization Strategy and Choice: Maryland Declares Its Political Independence: Partisan Passage of the “Maryland Defense Act” Modern Federalism The National Government’s Advantage in the Courts Preemption Legislation The Carrot: Federal Grants to the States Politics to Policy: States’ Rights Meet Reading, Writing, and ’Rithmetic: The Battle over the Common Core The Stick: Unfunded Mandates Evolving Federalism: A By-Product of National Policy Politics to Policy: Who Pays for Government? Comparing State and Federal Tax Burdens Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 4 • Civil Rights What Are Civil Rights? The Civil Rights of African Americans The Politics of Black Civil Rights The Height of Slavery: 1808–1865 Reconstruction: 1865–1877 Strategy and Choice: The Emancipation Proclamation The Jim Crow Era and Segregation: 1877–1933 Democratic Party Sponsorship of Civil Rights: 1933– 1940s Emergence of a Civil Rights Coalition: 1940s–1950s The Civil Rights Movement: 1960s Politics to Policy: The 1964 Civil Rights Act and Integration of Public Schools Current Civil Rights Policy The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement Equal Rights for Women: The Right to Vote The Modern History of Women’s Rights Rights for Hispanics Gay Rights Challenging Tyranny Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 5 • Civil Liberties Nationalization of Civil Liberties The Bill of Rights Checks Majority Rule Writing Rights and Liberties into the Constitution The First Ten Amendments Incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment Judicial Interpretation Major versus Peripheral Rights Freedom of Speech Political Protest Disturbing Speech Sexually Explicit Expression Politics to Policy: The Legacy of Brandenberg Politics to Policy: Corporate Free Speech Freedom of the Press Freedom of Religion Establishment School Prayer and Bible Reading Free Exercise Gun Rights Criminal Rights Fourth Amendment: Illegal Searches and Seizures Fifth Amendment: Self-Incrimination Sixth Amendment: Right to Counsel and Impartial Jury of Peers Eighth Amendment: “Cruel and Unusual” Punishment Privacy Childbearing Choices Privacy on the Internet Civil Liberties as Public Policy Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Part II: The Institutions of Government Chapter 6 • Congress Congress in the Constitution Powers of Congress The Electoral System Congressional Districts Strategy and Choice: The Republican Gerrymander in 2012 Unequal Representation in the Senate Congress and Electoral Politics Candidate-Centered versus Party-Centered Electoral Politics National Politics in Congressional Elections Representation versus Responsibility Who Serves in Congress? Basic Problems of Legislative Organization Need for Information Coordination Problems Resolving Conflicts Collective Action Transaction Costs Time Pressures Organizing Congress The Parties Increased Partisanship The Committee Systems Congressional Staff and Support Groups Making Laws Introducing Legislation Assignment to Committee Hearings Reporting a Bill Logic of Politics: Congressional Investigations Scheduling Debate Debate and Amendment Strategy and Choice: The Origin and Evolution of the Senate Filibuster The Vote Reconciling Differences To the President A Bias against Action Evaluating Congress Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 7 • The Presidency The Historical Presidency The Era of Cabinet Government Parties and Elections Strategy and Choice: Lincoln and His Cabinet The Modern Presidency The President as Commander in Chief and Head of State The President as Chief Executive The President as Legislator Logic of Politics: The Veto Game Going Public The Institutional Presidency Conclusion Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 8 • The Bureaucracy The Development of the Federal Bureaucracy Modest Beginnings: The Dilemma of Delegation The Federalist Years: A Reliance on Respectability Democratization of the Civil Service: The Spoils System Civil Service Reform An Expanding Government The Cabinet Noncabinet Agencies Bureaucracy in Action Logic of Politics: Insulating the Fed Logic of Politics: The Deep State Writes an Op-Ed Bureaucratic Culture and Autonomy Politics to Policy: Can You Just Get Rid of Bureaucracy? The “Abolish ICE” Movement Bureaucrats as Politicians Bureaucratic Infighting Who Controls the Bureaucracy? Methods of Congressional Control The President and the Bureaucracy The Courts and the Bureaucracy Iron Triangles, Captured Agencies, and Issue Networks Strategy and Choice: A Fight with a Bureaucrat Goes Global Bureaucratic Reform: A Hardy Perennial The Logic of Red Tape The Bureaucratic Reward System Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 9 • The Federal Judiciary Setting the Stage for Judicial Review Three Eras of the Court’s Judicial Review Nation versus State Regulating the National Economy The Rise of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties A Fourth Era? Reasserting Judicial Review and a Return to States’ Rights The Structure of the Federal Judiciary Politics to Policy: Chief Justice Roberts Stands Alone and Puts His Stamp on the Roberts Court Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts The Supreme Court’s Delegation The Limits of Internal Control Judicial Decision-Making Selecting Cases Doctrine: Policymaking by the Court Deciding Doctrine Politics to Policy: Judicial Activism The Supreme Court’s Place in the Separation of Powers Absence of Judicial Enforcement Constitutional and Statutory Control Department of Justice Judicial Recruitment Does a Politicized Judiciary Alter Separation of Powers? Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Part III: The Public’s Influence on National Policy Chapter 10 • Public Opinion What Is Public Opinion? Measuring Public Opinion The Origins of Public Opinion Attitudes Ideologies Partisanship Acquiring Opinions Information Framing Strategy and Choice: Framing Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio Is Public Opinion Meaningful? Stability of Aggregate Public Opinion Opinion Leadership The Content of Public Opinion Consensus on the System Politicians: A Suspect Class Public Opinion on Issues Politics to Policy: Public Opinion and Welfare Reform Effects of Background on Public Opinion Race and Ethnicity Gender Income and Education Religion Other Demographic Divisions Public Opinion: A Vital Component of American Politics Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 11 • Voting, Campaigns, and Elections The Logic of Elections The Right to Vote Wider Suffrage for Men Suffrage for Women Suffrage for African Americans and Young Americans Who Uses the Right to Vote? Individual Factors Affecting Turnout Institutional Factors Affecting Turnout Strategy and Choice: Personal Politics: Mobilization How Do Voters Decide? Past Performance and Incumbency Assessing the Issues and Policy Options Voter Cues and Shortcuts The Power of Party Identification Election Campaigns The Basic Necessities: Candidates and Messages Strategy and Choice: To Run or Not to Run The Other Necessity: Campaign Money Politics to Policy: Soft Money Finds a New Home The Logic of Elections Revisited Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 12 • Political Parties The Constitution’s Unwanted Offspring Incentives for Party Building Basic Features of the Party System Logic of Politics: Third-Party Blues Development and Evolution of the Party Systems The First Party System: The Origin of American Parties The Second Party System: Organizational Innovation The Third Party System: Entrepreneurial Politics The Fourth Party System: Republican Ascendancy The Fifth Party System: The New Deal Coalition Revival of the Parties: A Sixth Party System? Partisanship Endures Party Differences Changes in the Party Coalitions Modern Party Organizations Expediency Persists Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 13 • Interest Groups The Logic of Lobbying The Origins of Interest Group Politics in the United States The Pluralist Defense of Interest Groups Politics to Policy: High School Students Turned Gun Control Lobbyists: An Interest Group Born from a Mass Shooting Vows #NeverAgain The Problem of Collective Action Logic of Politics: The Political Power of Small Numbers Contemporary Interest Groups Why Have Interest Groups Proliferated? Fragmentation and Specialization What Do Interest Groups Do? Insider Tactics: Trafficking in Information and Cultivating Access Strategy and Choice: Why Spend Millions on Lobbying? Because It Is Worth Billions Outsider Tactics: Altering the Political Forces Litigation Strategy and Choice: Lobbying with a Social Network Electoral Politics and Political Action Committees Logic of Politics: Labor Unions, Free Riding, and the Fees that Fund Political Power Interest Group Politics: Controversial and Thriving Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Chapter 14 • Media Development of the News Business The Economics of Early Newspapers Rise of the Penny Press Emergence of Radio and Television The Digital Revolution: Internet and Mobile Strategy and Choice: Wi-Fi Brings Sectors Together to Solve Coordination Problems A Tragedy of the Commons: Broadcast Technology Introduces Regulation An Ever-Changing News Media Legacy News as a Consumer Product: How the News Gets “Made” Legacy News Producers: Reporters and Their News Organizations Strategy and Choice: The Military’s Media Strategy How Legacy News Is Produced: Content and Form How News on Social Media Is Generated Limits on the Media Demand for and Effects of News Where People Get Their News How the Media Influence Citizens News Media as the “Fourth Branch” Politician–Press Relations Then and Now Strategy and Choice: The Shrinking Presidential Sound Bite: A Tweet! Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Part IV: Conclusion Chapter 15 • Is There a Logic to American Policy? Free Riding and Health Care The Obstacles to Taking Domestic Action to Stop Global Climate Change High-Stakes Maneuvering: Why We Tiptoe up to, but Have Not Fallen off, the Fiscal Cliff Logic of Politics: #Grubergate and the Perils of Making Free Riders Pay Up The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Entitlement Reform The Success and Failure of Collective Action: A Tale of Two Tax Reforms Logic of Politics: The Structure of Government and AntiTobacco Laws Strategy and Choice: Saying No to Getting to Yes: Why an Immigration Deal Has Proven Elusive Conclusion Key Terms Suggested Readings Review Questions Reference Material Glossary Notes Index About the Authors Preface Donald Trump’s election and his first two years in office seem only to point out the illogic of American politics. Since writing this book’s last edition, shortly after the 2016 election, America’s politics has been in continuous tumult. The question we confront as we take the Trump presidency into account asks, does Donald Trump’s election and first two years in office break the mold, requiring us to rethink Logic ’s approach to the systematic forces and processes that govern the play of politics in Washington and across the nation? Perhaps not. The tumultuous events might represent the proverbial “exception that proves the rule.” If the latter, Trump’s election and presidency would allow us to glean new insights into American politics in other political actors’ responses to Trump’s unconventional behavior. Answering this question lies at the heart of this revision. Obviously, assessment of the extraordinary 2016 election and the 2018 midterms are major topics of Chapter 11 ’s coverage of voting and elections, and sizing up Trump’s first two years in office occupies much of the attention of Chapter 7 on the presidency. In both we seek to square the Trump years with the stable systematic forces at work in both arenas. But this question pervades every other chapter as well. We close Chapter 2 (“The Constitution”) by considering the proliferation of contentious separation of powers issues that in some instances preceded the Trump presidency but that his policies have made more salient and problematic. Chapter 3 ’s coverage of federalism introduces the Democratic and Republican cadres of state attorneys general signed on to lawsuits challenging or supporting administration policies according to their partisan alignment with the president. Chapter 4 reports on the ongoing tribulations over the still unresolved Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy affecting several hundred thousand children brought into the country illegally. With Republicans controlling both chambers of the 115th Congress and Trump in the White House, the Republicans were poised to fulfill their dream of repealing Obamacare; Chapter 6 explains why they could not. We learn in Chapter 8 just how extensive presidents’ administrative authority is, in chronicling President Trump’s directions to administration officials to roll back the Obama administration’s extensive formal and informal regulations of businesses and state administration of federal programs. Chapter 9 finds the federal judiciary giving new meaning to activism in which an increasing number of district judges in the states weigh in on national policy by issuing national injunctions, again lining up consistently with the preferences of the party of the president who appointed them. Chapter 10 takes a close look at public opinion, paying particular attention to issues on which it has changed over the last several decades but also to issues on which opinion has been remarkably stable. Chapter 12 notes how intense opposition to Trump and his Republican partners energized Democratic partisans in 2018, especially women, producing a dramatic upsurge in activism, unprecedented levels of campaign spending, the highest midterm turnout in more than a century, and a Democratic House majority. Chapter 13 shows how students from Parkland, Florida, adopted and refreshed the techniques of interest group influence to put pressure on President Trump and Congress to make progress to reduce gun violence. Chapter 14 addresses the ever-changing role of the media in American politics. In this edition, we separate media into legacy media, digital-only media, and social media and discuss how the news is produced and consumed for each type. We also examine the role of fake news—all while addressing the threat to democracy that comes when the president refers to legacy news outlets as “fake news” and labels media “the enemy of the people.” And in Chapter 15 , we use the logic of collective action to explain why President Trump’s tax reform of 2017 succeeded in passing, whereas prior efforts by President Obama and by Republican leaders in Congress had failed. One of the themes of The Logic of American Politics is that, alongside the outsized personalities that inhabit Washington, D.C., and the idiosyncratic events that appear to drive it, systematic forces remain at work. The book’s goal is to help students understand these forces and to see how they shape the choices of political leaders today. We want to help readers discern the rationale embedded in the extraordinary and complex array of American political institutions and practices. To accomplish this goal, we analyze political institutions and practices as (imperfect) solutions to problems facing people who need to act collectively. We highlight recurring obstacles to collective action in various contexts to illuminate the diverse institutional means that American politicians have created to overcome them. These obstacles include the conflict over values and interests, the difficulty of aggregating individual preferences into collective decisions, the need for coordination, and the threat of reneging implicit in every collective undertaking. Stable political communities strengthen their capacity to act collectively and reduce the costs of doing so by fashioning appropriate institutions. These institutions feature majority and plurality rules and procedures that convert votes into representation, delegate authority to agents, and permit some institutional actors to propose courses of action while allocating to others the right to veto proposals. Throughout the book we emphasize the strategic dimension of political action, from the Framers’ tradeoffs in crafting the Constitution to the efforts of contemporary officeholders to shape policy, so students can understand current institutions as the products of political conflicts, as well as the venues for resolving them. New challenges pose fresh problems for collective action for which current institutions may seem inadequate. The institutions created to deal with the challenges of collective action at one historical moment can continue to shape politics long after those challenges have receded. Therefore, we pay a good deal of attention to the historical development of political institutions, a narrative that reveals politicians and citizens grappling intellectually, as well as politically, with their collective action problems and discovering the institutional means to resolve them. This book is the product of our nearly forty years of teaching American politics in a way that seeks to go beyond the basics. In addition to introducing students to descriptive facts and fundamental principles, we have sought to help them cultivate an ability to analyze and understand American politics for themselves. Each of us is variously associated with the rational choice school, yet over time our research and teaching have benefited from many of its insights, especially those familiarly referred to as “the new institutionalism.” We have found these insights helpful in making sense of American politics in terms that students can grasp intuitively. Having absorbed these ideas into our own scholarly thinking, we employ them here to help students understand what the American political system looks like and why it has assumed its present shape. Approach Our emphasis on the primacy of institutions extends well beyond collecting and processing the preferences of citizens and politicians. In that institutions may structure the choices available to voters and their leaders, we view them as indispensable in explaining public opinion and the strategic behavior of the political organizations that seek to influence and mobilize these preferences. We therefore have adopted a somewhat unorthodox structure for the book. We cover the rules of the game and the formal institutions of government before discussing the “input” side of the political process—public opinion, elections, parties, and interest groups— because we emphasize the way rules and institutions structure the actions and choices of citizens and politicians alike. The introduction offers ideas and concepts employed throughout the text. They can be classified under two broad categories: collective action problems and institutional design concepts . Both sets of ideas have deeply informed each chapter’s argument. Because this is an introduction to American politics, rather than to political theory, we have intentionally sublimated the analytic ideas in favor of enlisting them to explicate real politics. Along with traditional concepts that remain indispensable to understanding American politics—such as representation, majority rule, and separation of powers—we introduce students to a number of ideas from economics that political scientists have found increasingly useful for exploring American politics. These include the focal points of coordination, prisoner’s dilemma, free riding, tragedy of the commons, transaction costs, principal–agent relations, and public goods. Organization of the Book The substantive chapters are arranged in four parts. Part I covers the foundational elements of American politics: the Constitution, federalism, civil rights, and civil liberties. The chapters that cover these topics give students an understanding of the political origins and development of the basic structure and rules of the national polity. Part II examines the major formal institutions of national government: Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the federal judiciary. These chapters reveal how the politics and logic of their development have shaped their current organizational features, practices, and relations with one another. Part III analyzes the institutions that link citizens with government officials, again in terms of their historical development, political logic, and present-day operations. Chapters in this section are devoted to public opinion; voting, campaigns, and elections; political parties; interest groups; and the news media. Part IV features a concluding chapter that evaluates American policymaking through the lens of our collective action framework. Through five vignettes that span policies from health care reform to global climate change, this chapter uses the concepts covered throughout the book to yield insights into the sources of policy problems, point to possible solutions, and explain why agreement on those solutions is often difficult to achieve. Equipped with this understanding of the logic of policymaking, students can apply the same logic underlying these examples to other policy challenges, from immigration reform to pork barrel spending and U.S. disputes with other nations. Students come away from the chapter and the book as a whole with the tools needed to think in new ways about how American government works. Instructional Features The Logic of American Politics includes special features designed to engage students’ attention and to help them think analytically about the subject. Learning objectives and key thematic questions at the beginning of each chapter preview important themes and set the tone for critical thinking. Each chapter opens with a story from the real world of politics that introduces one or more of the central issues to be explored in that chapter. To help the student reader spot the collective action and institutional design concepts when they occasionally break to the surface, we have highlighted these passages in bright blue text. In addition, important terms and concepts throughout the text appear in boldface the first time they are defined. These key terms are listed at the end of each chapter, with page references to their explanations, and are defined in a glossary at the back of the book. The Logic of Politics boxes explain the logical rationale or implications of some institutional feature presented in the text. Another set of boxes, Strategy and Choice , explores how politicians use institutions and respond to the incentives that institutions provide in pursuing their personal or constituencies’ interests. In addition to examining the logic of the policymaking process in our concluding chapter, we continue to cover public policy where it is most relevant to the discussion, incorporating policy issues throughout the book. Politics to Policy boxes explain how policies reflect the underlying political rationale of the institutions that produce them. To encourage students to continue their studies of American politics beyond the pages of this volume, we have included annotated reading lists at the end of each chapter. Digital Resources We know how important good resources can be in the teaching of American government. Our goal has been to create resources that not only support but also enhance the text’s themes and features. SAGE edge offers a robust online environment featuring an impressive array of tools and resources for review, study, and further exploration, keeping both instructors and students on the cutting edge of teaching and learning. SAGE edge content is open access and available on demand. Learning and teaching have never been easier! SAGE coursepacks for instructors make it easy to import our quality content into your school’s learning management system (LMS).* Intuitive and simple to use, the coursepacks allow you to Say NO to . . . required access codes learning a new system Say YES to . . . using only the content you want and need high-quality assessment and multimedia exercises * For use in Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace by Desire2Learn (D2L), and Moodle. Don’t use an LMS platform? No problem, you can still access many of the online resources for your text via SAGE edge. With SAGE coursepacks, you get the following: Quality textbook content delivered directly into your LMS An intuitive, simple format that makes it easy to integrate the material into your course with minimal effort Assessment tools that foster review, practice, and critical thinking, including the following: diagnostic chapter pretests and posttests that identify opportunities for improvement, track student progress, and ensure mastery of key learning objectives test banks built on Bloom’s taxonomy that provide a diverse range of test items with ExamView test generation a test bank grading rubric to support the grading of essay and short-answer questions activity and quiz options that allow you to choose only the assignments and tests you want instructions on how to use and integrate the comprehensive assessments and resources provided Assignable data exercises in each chapter help students build essential data literacy skills using interactive data visualization tools from SAGE Stats and U.S. Political Stats . Drawing on key data series ranging from demographic patterns to state budgets to voting behavior, these exercises offer students a dynamic way to analyze realworld data and think critically about the numbers. Assignable SAGE Premium Video (available via the interactive eBook version, linked through SAGE coursepacks) tied to learning objectives and curated exclusively for this text to bring concepts to life, featuring the following: corresponding multimedia assessment options that automatically feed to your gradebook a comprehensive, downloadable, easy-to-use media guide in the coursepack for every video resource , listing the chapter to which the video content is tied, matching learning objective(s), a helpful description of the video content, and assessment questions “Topics in American Government” videos that recap the fundamentals of American politics in every chapter—from the Bill of Rights to voter turnout to the powers of the presidency Newsclips from the Associated Press that bring extra coverage of current events into the book, connecting multiple, brief two- to four-minute newsclips to core American government chapter content Editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint ® slides that offer flexibility when creating multimedia lectures so you don’t have to start from scratch Sample course syllabi with suggested models for structuring your course that give you options to customize your course to your exact needs An instructor manual for each chapter, including a chapter summary, learning objectives, discussion questions and ideas, and in-class activities, to support your teaching Integrated links to the interactive eBook that make it easy for students to maximize their study time with this anywhere, anytime mobile-friendly version of the text. It also offers access to more digital tools and resources, including SAGE Premium Video. All tables and figures from the textbook SAGE edge for students enhances learning, is easy to use, and offers the following: An open-access site that makes it easy for students to maximize their study time, anywhere, anytime eFlashcards that strengthen understanding of key terms and concepts Quizzes that allow students to practice and assess how much they’ve learned and where they need to focus their attention Meaningful video and web links that facilitate student use of Internet resources, further exploration of topics, and responses to critical thinking questions Acknowledgments Without the help and encouragement of department colleagues, friends, students, and the editorial staff at CQ Press, this book never would have been completed. The book also has benefited from the insightful and astute comments of colleagues at other institutions who took time from their busy schedules to review chapters. We are deeply obliged to everyone who has helped us along the way. In particular, we wish to thank Lawrence Baum, Lee Epstein, Rosalind Gold, Richard Hart, and Vickie Stangl for their assistance in procuring data for tables and figures and clarifying historical events. Our colleagues and students at the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, Los Angeles have contributed to every aspect of the book, often in ways they might not realize, for the way we think about politics is permeated by the intellectual atmosphere they have created and continue to sustain. Lee Dionne assisted us in revising those sections covering the judiciary and case law; Derek Bonnett collected information for updating the presidency chapter. We are indebted to Charisse Kiino, who regularly summoned her nonpareil skills as a diplomat, critic, dispatcher, coach, and booster, and Monica Eckman for her steady oversight of the whole. Anna Villarruel diligently managed the book’s many gangling features, including not only the manuscript and digital resources but, with the able help of Sam Rosenberg, also photographs and cartoons, tables and figures, and citations. Mark Bast cheerfully entered the ring with the authors to wrestle the prose into submission, and Tracy Buyan coordinated the editing and production processes. We also wish to thank Eric Garner, who managed production; Amanda Simpson, who managed the manufacturing; Anthony Paular, who designed the cover; and Erica DeLuca and Jennifer Jones for brochures, advertisements, and displays for the professional meetings. The following are colleagues across the country who have read and commented on the past four editions and given us an abundance of good advice, much of which we took in writing this revision. Equally essential, they kept us from making many embarrassing mistakes. Roberta Adams, Salisbury University Danny M. Adkison, Oklahoma State University E. Scott Adler, University of Colorado Scott H. Ainsworth, University of Georgia Richard A. Almeida, Francis Marion University Ellen Andersen, University of Vermont Phillip J. Ardoin, Appalachian State University Ross K. Baker, Rutgers University Lawrence A. Baum, Ohio State University Michelle Belco, University of Houston William T. Bianco, Indiana University Sarah Binder, Brookings Institution and George Washington University Rachel Bitecofer, University of Georgia Ray Block, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse Christopher Bonneau, University of Pittsburgh Shenita Brazelton, Old Dominion University Jeremy Buchman, Long Island University Michael Burton, Ohio University Suzanne Chod, North Central College Rosalee Clawson, Purdue University Christopher Austin Clemens, Texas A&M University Ann H. Cohen, Hunter College of the City University of New York Marty Cohen, James Madison University Richard S. Conley, University of Florida Michael Crespin, University of Georgia Laura Mayate-DeAndreis, Modesto Junior College Michelle D. Deardorff, Jackson State University Katharine Destler, George Mason University John Domino, Sam Houston State University Keith Dougherty, University of Georgia Justin Dyer, University of Missouri Michael J. Faber, Texas State University Jason Fichtner, Georgetown University Richard S. Fleisher, Fordham University John Freemuth, Boise State University Yvonne Gastelum, San Diego State University John B. Gilmour, College of William & Mary Lawrence L. Giventer, California State University–Stanislaus Brad Gomez, Florida State University Craig Goodman, University of Houston–Victoria Sanford Gordon, New York University Andrew Green, Central College Paul Gronke, Reed College Edward B. Hasecke, Wittenberg University Danny Hayes, George Washington University Valerie Heitshusen, Georgetown University Richard Herrera, Arizona State University Marc Hetherington, Vanderbilt University Leif Hoffman, Lewis-Clark State College Brian D. Humes, Georgetown University Jeffery Jenkins, University of Virginia Joel W. Johnson, Colorado State University–Pueblo Paul E. Johnson, University of Kansas Timothy Johnson, University of Minnesota Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Bowling Green State University Chris Koski, James Madison University Doug Kuberski, Florida State College at Jacksonville Timothy M. LaPira, James Madison University Dan Lee, Michigan State University Joel Lefkowitz, State University of New York–New Paltz Brad Lockerbie, East Carolina University Amy Lauren Lovecraft, University of Alaska–Fairbanks Roger Lukoff, American University Anthony Madonna, University of Georgia Forrest A. Maltzman, George Washington University Wendy Martinek, Binghamton University John McAdams, Marquette University Madhavi McCall, San Diego State University Ian McDonald, Lewis & Clark College Scott R. Meinke, Bucknell University Rob Mellen Jr., Mississippi State University John Mercurio, San Diego State University Eric Miller, Blinn College, Bryan Campus Will Miller, Ohio University William J. Miller, Southeast Missouri State University Richard Millsap, University of Texas at Arlington Ashley Moraguez, University of North Carolina–Asheville Tracy F. Munsil, Arizona Christian University Timothy Nokken, Texas Tech University Shannon O’Brien, University of Texas at Austin Bruce I. Oppenheimer, Vanderbilt University L. Marvin Overby, University of Missouri–Columbia Carl Palmer, Illinois State University Hong Min Park, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Bryan Parsons, University of Tennessee at Martin Justin Phillips, Columbia University Andrew J. Polsky, Hunter College Alexandra Reckendorf, Virginia Commonwealth University Suzanne M. Robbins, George Mason University Jason Roberts, University of Minnesota Beth Rosenson, University of Florida Mikhail Rybalko, Texas Tech University Eric Schicker, University of California–Berkeley Ronnee Schreiber, San Diego State University Mark Shanahan, University of Reading Charles Shipan, University of Michigan David Shock, Kennesaw State University James D. Slack, University of Alabama at Birmingham Charles Anthony Smith, University of California–Irvine Carl Snook, Southern Polytechnic State University Tara Stricko-Neubauer, Kennesaw State University Joseph Ura, Texas A&M University Brian Vargus, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Charles E. Walcott, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Hanes Walton Jr., University of Michigan Wendy Watson, University of North Texas Christopher Weible, University of Colorado–Denver Patrick C. Wohlfarth, University of Maryland–College Park Frederick Wood, Coastal Carolina University Garry Young, George Washington University Finally, our families. Dianne Kernell; Marty BlakeJacobson; Jeff Lewis; and Kate, Will, and Kat Kousser also deserve our gratitude for putting up with what occasionally seemed an interminable drain on our time and attention. We are sure they are as delighted as we are to have this revision finished. A Note to Students Plan of the Book Our analysis of the logic of American politics begins in Chapter 1 with an introduction to the analytical concepts we draw on throughout the text. Although these concepts are straightforward and intuitive, we do not expect you to understand them fully until they have been applied in later chapters. The rest of the text is arranged in four main parts. Part I looks at the foundational elements of the political system that are especially relevant to understanding modern American politics. It begins with the constitutional system (Chapter 2 , “The Constitution”) and then moves on to the relations between the national government and the states (Chapter 3 , “Federalism”); the evolution of civil rights and the definition of citizenship (Chapter 4 , “Civil Rights”); and the establishment of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and religion (Chapter 5 , “Civil Liberties”). A recurring theme of Part I is nationalization , the gradual shift of authority from state and local governments to the national government. Part II examines the four basic institutions of America’s national government: Congress (Chapter 6 ), the presidency (Chapter 7 ), the bureaucracy (Chapter 8 ), and the federal judiciary (Chapter 9 ). The development of effective, resourceful institutions at the national level has made it possible for modern-day politicians to tackle problems that in an earlier time they would have been helpless to solve. We explain how all four institutions have evolved along the paths initiated and confined by the Constitution in response to the forces of nationalization and other social and economic changes. Part III surveys the institutions that keep citizens informed about what their representatives are doing and enable them to influence their elected officials through voting and other forms of participation. Chapter 10 , “Public Opinion,” explores the nature of modern political communication by focusing on the ins and outs of mass public opinion. Chapter 11 , “Voting, Campaigns, and Elections,” examines the ways in which candidates’ strategies and voters’ preferences interact at the polls to produce national leaders and, on occasion, create mandates for policies. The Constitution mentions neither political parties nor interest groups, and the Framers were deeply suspicious of both. But they are vital to helping citizens make sense of politics and pursue political goals effectively. In Chapter 12 , “Political Parties,” and Chapter 13 , “Interest Groups,” we explain how and why parties and interest groups have flourished as intermediaries between citizens and government officials. President Woodrow Wilson once aptly observed that “news is the atmosphere of politics.” Chapter 14 looks at the news media both as channels of communication from elected leaders to their constituents and as independent sources of information about the leaders’ performance. The chapter also considers the implications of the rise of the Internet in coordinating the collective efforts of unorganized publics. Part IV , which consists of Chapter 15 , concludes our inquiry by evaluating American public policymaking through the lens of our collective action framework to discern the logic of the policymaking process. Special Features This book contains several special features designed to help you grasp the logic of American politics. Because these features, including the substantive captions, play an integral role in the presentation and discussion, you should read them with as much care as you do the text . At the outset of each chapter are key questions that preview important themes and, we hope, will pique your curiosity. To help you more easily spot discussions of collective action problems and institutional design concepts, important passages and analytic points are highlighted in bright blue text. Within each chapter, thematic boxes labeled Logic of Politics consider more fully the logical rationale and implications of certain features of government design introduced in the core text. Another set of boxes, Strategy and Choice , focuses on the sometimes imaginative ways politicians enlist institutions to advance their agendas and their constituents’ goals. A third set of thematic boxes, Politics to Policy , treats some of the public policy issues that have sprung forth from the political process. Additional boxes, tables, figures, photographs, and other visuals clarify and enliven the text. To encourage you to pursue more information on topics you find particularly interesting, we have included annotated lists of suggested readings at the end of each chapter. How to Read the Graphs A picture is worth a thousand words. You may think this book is too long as it is, but it would be a lot longer if we couldn’t use figures and graphs to show you important relationships. Figures tell stories, and if we have a figure in a chapter it is because the story it tells is important to your understanding or thinking about the concepts in the chapter. Don’t skip the figures! They are an important element in really understanding what we’re talking about. Because figures are so important to learning, imagination, and discovery, it is important you are comfortable interpreting them and feel at home looking at data presented visually. Before we get started with substantive material, we wanted to make sure you know how to evaluate the figures we use. There are several types of figures. We use a few repeatedly: Bar graphs show numbers that are independent of each other. Examples might include things like the number of people who preferred each of the presidential candidates in the last election. Line graphs show you how numbers have changed over time . They are used when you have data that are connected, and to show trends, for example, average support for the president in each month of the year. Cartesian graphs or scatter plots have numbers on both axes, which therefore allow you to see how changes in one thing affect another . For example, we may want to show how changes in consumer sentiment are related to changes in presidential approval. The first step in reading any figure or graph is understanding what you are looking at. The place to start is with the axes. Graphs generally have two axes, the lines that run across the bottom of the figure and typically up the left side. The line along the bottom is called the horizontal or x-axis, and the line up the side is called the vertical or y-axis. (An easy way to remember which one is which is to think of the letter Y and it’s stem extending down the vertical axis line.) Both axes can contain either numbers or categories of things. They generally start with the lowest value at the origin of the axes (the place where both lines meet, the bottom left corner of the figure). The numbers or categories typically increase (if they are cardinal in nature) as you move to the right on the horizontal axis and up on the vertical axis. A good figure has labels on both axes to help the reader interpret the data. A good figure also starts and ends at reasonable numbers. Checking the axes is an important first step in reading a figure. They answer the questions, what is the purpose of this figure, and how will it show me the data? The data in figures are often presented as lines, markers (like dots), or bars. In scatter plots, which show the relationship between what is on the horizontal and vertical axes, figures often contain a line across the diagonal at forty-five degrees. This line is called the forty-five-degree line. It is helpful especially if the axes of the figure take on the same values. In this case, the forty-five-degree line represents the cases (the dots) where the values on the horizontal axis match the values on the vertical axis exactly . Dots on the line are exact matches. Dots off the line are not—specifically, those above the line are cases in which values are higher on the y-axis than on the x-axis, and dots below the line are the opposite. In addition to these important elements on the graph, the information around the figure is also important. Good figures have a title that tells you exactly what the story in the figure is. Figures should also give you a time frame for the data they present and a note that tells you the source of the data shown and when it was collected. Practice interpreting a few graphs so you will be ready to think about the figures in the chapters to come! One More Thing Politics, like every significant human endeavor, becomes more intriguing the more deeply it is explored and understood. Our book aims to give you not only a strong basic foundation for understanding political life in the present-day United States but also a glimpse of how intellectually enjoyable it can be to grapple with its puzzles and paradoxes. 1 The Logic of American Politics President Barack Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, after both houses of Congress worked together—for different reasons—to replace the unpopular and flawed No Child Left Behind law. It serves as an example of the compromises often required in government, where no side can get exactly what it wants and through collective effort must strive to find a mutually acceptable policy. With the confirmation of President Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of the Department of Education—an appointment opposed by every Democratic senator (and a couple of Republicans)—the prospect of cutting future education reform deals will be more difficult. AP Photo/Evan Vucci Drew Angerer/Getty Images Chapter Objectives 1.1 Summarize the importance of institutional design in governance. 1.2 Discuss the role of a constitution in establishing the rules and procedures that government institutions must follow for collective agreement. 1.3 Identify different types of collective action problems. 1.4 Explain the costs of collective action. 1.5 Relate the different ways that representative government works. 1.6 Discuss the similarities and differences between private, public, and collective goods. 1.7 Explain what motivated the Founders to try to solve collective action problems. “T his is a Christmas miracle,” a beaming President Obama proclaimed on signing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015. Flanked at the signing ceremony by congressional leaders from both political parties, the president added, “We should do this more often.” Indeed, in Washington’s present-day polarized politics, bipartisan agreement on major policy is a rare sight. But ESSA—affecting 50 million students and their teachers across 100,000 schools—passed with huge majorities in both houses of Congress. What occurred differently that allowed Congress and the president to break their normal gridlock and pass this major law? Answering this question may or may not provide Washington with a roadmap past gridlock. What it certainly offers students of American politics, however, is insight into the process that leads politicians who are ideologically and politically distant from one another to settle on a policy that they (and their like-minded colleagues) prefer to current policy. The Every Student Succeeds Act represents a sweeping revision of the fourteen-year-old No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. * That law, championed by Republican president George W. Bush, sought to strengthen K–12 education by holding laggard schools up to strict performance standards. To qualify for indispensable federal grants under NCLB, schools needed to track students’ performance with standardized tests. Schools in the bottom 5 percent of test scores that failed to significantly improve student performance would be overhauled and possibly closed. * Welcome to the world of acronyms, where staff on Capitol Hill can be heard saying such things as, “OMB sent over a SAP threatening SSA.” Translation: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) in which President Obama threatened to veto Republicans’ 2013 legislation, the Student Success Act (SSA). The goal of strengthening education was laudable, but Democrats and Republicans in Congress had different reasons for supporting President Bush’s initiative. Republicans were helping their president fulfill a campaign promise to improve K–12 education across the nation. In addition, NCLB gave them a way of preventing school districts from taking and freely spending federal money without accountability—schools had to demonstrate that they were using it to improve their programs. Democrats were perhaps even more enthusiastic about the Republican president’s initiative. They had long promoted federal aid in education, and impoverished, minority students appeared to stand to gain the most from close scrutiny of failing schools. To satisfy the objectives of accountability and reform, both parties agreed to the creation of a standardized national test of students’ verbal and math skills. * Each side quickly found something it liked in NCLB and passed it promptly, at least when compared with the normal lengthy vetting that accompanies most legislation that creates new policy. * This became the Common Core, one of the most controversial features of NCLB. Not long into the administration of NCLB, however, problems started cropping up. The success envisioned in the law’s timelines for student improvement in reading and math test scores failed to materialize, as was bound to happen. NCLB mandated an ambitious 100 percent student proficiency on these tests within 12 years (2014). Moreover, many center city and rural schools that faced special challenges in educating their students continued to fail—some miserably—in improving their students’ tests scores. According to critics, as pressures to meet Department of Education performance deadlines approached, schools began concentrating on student performance on standardized tests to the neglect of a broader, quality education. A few teachers responded to the pressures with direct action—coaching students on answers during tests and, afterward, even correcting students’ answers. School districts and state agencies began requesting deadline exemptions and extensions of deadlines to accommodate their inability to meet NCLB’s stiff standards. † By 2015, forty-three of the fifty states had received waivers. † Federal mandates attached to financial aid are a standard practice whereby Congress asserts a national policy without directly taking over administration. We explore the “carrot/stick” properties of federal grants in Chapter 3 . Clearly, NCLB failed to live up to its aspirations. Democrats and Republicans initially responded differently to this failure. Republicans focused on the duress Washington’s “one size fits all” performance standards presented to their states’ educational systems. Even though NCLB had been their president’s initiative, many Republicans in Congress chafed at the way it had dramatically shifted educational policy from local control to Washington. In 2013 the Republican-majority House of Representatives passed a bill that eliminated most of NCLB’s federal oversight provisions, as well as the unreachable 2014 target date for 100 percent proficiency. States would be able to set achievement standards and develop their own testing methods for measuring success and identifying underachieving schools. President Obama, prodded by civil rights groups who worried that the legislation would allow states to abandon efforts to upgrade failing schools, threatened a veto of the bill, and it died in the Senate. At the same time, numerous states were seeking waivers to NCLB’s unrealistic test score goals. The Obama administration agreed to the requested waivers, but only after a state agreed to institute teacher evaluation procedures that took standardized test scores into account in teacher retention and promotion. Teachers’ organizations—traditional supporters of Democratic members of Congress—objected strenuously to this sudden, externally imposed policy that upset many long-standing contracts with local school districts. By 2015 Democrats and Republicans in Congress each had their own compelling reasons to rewrite No Child Left Behind. NCLB had become so unpopular that it forced Democrats and Republicans to search for and settle on a new law that neither side embraced as ideal but accepted as better than the status quo. Over the fall of 2015, bipartisan teams in both chambers and, later, in conference committee negotiations hammered out a compromise bill—the Every Student Succeeds Act. Republicans won major concessions that allowed states to develop their own student and teacher performance goals and tests. Moreover, the Department of Education would no longer mandate changes in teacher evaluation or dictate changes in failing schools. Democrats won a major concession requiring states to continue some form of student testing and results reporting to the Department of Education. With these instruments, failing schools could still be identified and efforts to improve them assessed. As this example shows, social choices inevitably breed conflict, especially when they involve issues that affect the political parties’ core constituencies. Through politics, people try to manage such conflicts. Neither side may be thrilled by the results, but when politics succeeds, both sides discover a course of action that satisfies them more than the status quo. However, politics does not always end in success. Resources are too scarce to satisfy the competing claimants, and values prove irreconcilable. Even when the configuration of preferences might allow reconciliation, the political process itself may impede lawmakers’ efforts to agree on a new policy. (You will soon discover that this text is concerned with understanding how America’s political institutions expedite or interfere with citizens’ and their representatives’ ability to discover and pursue a collectively agreed-to policy.) Finally, successful politics does not always lead to happy endings. In the example of the ESSA, no one in either political party expressed enthusiasm for the education package beyond “the best deal we could get.” In more formal terms, politics is the process through which individuals and groups seek agreement on a course of common, or collective, * action— even as they disagree on the intended goals of that action . Politics matters because each party’s success in finding a solution requires the cooperation of others who are looking to solve a different problem. When their goals conflict, cooperation may be costly and difficult to achieve. * This text concentrates on politics in the American national government, but it also draws freely on examples from other settings because the logic embedded in political processes is not confined to matters related to government. Consequently, throughout the text we frequently refer to some generic collectivity , whose members engage each other in reaching a collective decision either to undertake some collective action or to produce some collective good . We enlist these general terms whenever we offer a definition, an observation, or a conclusion that has a general application. Success at politics almost invariably requires bargaining and compromise. Where the issues are simple and the participants know and trust one another, bargaining may be all that is needed for the group to reach a collective decision. Generally, success requires bargaining and ends in a compromise , or a settlement in which each side concedes some preferences to secure others. Those who create government institutions (and the political scientists who study them) tend to regard preferences as “givens”—individuals and groups know what they want—that must be reconciled if they are to agree to some common course of action. Preferences may reflect the individual’s economic situation, religious values, ethnic identity, or some other valued interest. We commonly associate preferences with some perception of selfinterest, but they need not be so restrictive. Millions of Americans oppose capital punishment, but few of those who do so expect to benefit personally from its ban. During the Great Depression, when millions of Americans were suddenly impoverished, many critics blamed unfettered capitalism. The National Association of Manufacturers, still a politically active industry association, posted billboards like this one around the country to bolster support for “private enterprise” by associating it with other fundamental preferences. Library of Congress Reconciling disagreement over government action represents a fundamental problem of politics. James Madison played a dominant role in drafting the Constitution, and we repeatedly turn to him for guidance throughout this book. In one of the most memorable and instructive statements justifying the new Constitution to delegates at the state conventions who were deciding whether to ratify it, he explained that the new government must be devised to represent and reconcile society’s many diverse preferences that are “sown into the nature of man”: A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points . . . have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. * * This passage is from Madison’s Federalist No. 10, published initially in 1787 as a newspaper editorial supporting the Constitution’s ratification. We examine this truly exceptional essay in Chapter 2 . We encourage you to read and study it; it is reprinted in its entirety in the appendix. Certainly, Madison’s observation appears no less true today than when he wrote it in 1787. The Importance of Institutional Design As participants and preferences in politics multiply and as issues become more complex and divisive, unstructured negotiation rarely yields success. It may simply require too much time and effort. It may require some participants to surrender too much of what they value in order to win concessions from the other side. In other words, a compromise solution simply may not be present. And finally, and this is crucial, because here the careful study of institutional design can make a difference, negotiation may expose each side to too great a risk that the other will not live up to its agreements. Fear of reneging may foster mutual suspicions and lead each side to conclude that “politics” will not work. When this occurs, war may become the preferred alternative. The conflict in the 1990s among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia followed such a dynamic. The earlier collapse of Yugoslavia’s communist government resurrected ancient enmities among people who had lived peacefully as neighbors for decades. In the absence of effective political institutions they could count on to manage potential conflicts, ethnic and religious rivals became trapped in a spiral of mutual suspicion, fear, and hostility. Without a set of rules prescribing a political process for reaching and enforcing collective agreements, they were joining militias and killing one another with shocking brutality within a year. Today the former Yugoslav states are separate national governments striving to build institutions that replace violence with politics. Whether at war or simply at odds over the mundane matter of scheduling employee coffee breaks, parties to a conflict benefit from prior agreement on rules and procedures for negotiations. Indeed, this theme reappears throughout this book: a stable community, whether a club or a nation-state, endures by establishing rules and procedures for promoting successful collective action. In January 1999, when the Senate turned to the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, the stage was set for an escalation of the partisan rancor that had marred the same proceedings in the House of Representatives. Yet the Senate managed to perform its constitutional responsibility speedily and with a surprising degree of decorum thanks to an early, closed-door meeting in which all one hundred senators endorsed a resolution that laid out the trial’s ground rules. More important, they agreed to give the chamber’s Democratic and Republican leaders the right to reject any changes to these rules. Thus members on both sides of the partisan divide could proceed toward a decision without fear that the other side would resort to trickery to get the results it favored. That the Senate would find a way to manage its disagreements is not surprising. Its leaders take pride in finding collegial ways of containing the potential conflicts that daily threaten to disrupt its business. Reliance on rules and procedures designed to reconcile society’s competing preferences is nothing new. In an era of arbitrary kings and aristocrats, republican political theorists understood their value. In a 1656 treatise exploring how institutions might be constructed to allow conflicting interests to find solutions in a more egalitarian way, English political theorist James Harrington described two young girls who were arguing about how to share a single slice of cake. Suddenly one of the girls proposed a rule: “‘Divide,’ said one to the other, ‘and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose.’” At this moment, Harrington stepped away from his story and seemingly shouted to the reader, “My God! These ‘silly girls’ have discovered the secret of republican institutions.” * With that ingenious rule, both girls were able to pursue their self-interest (the largest possible slice of cake) and yet have the collective decision result in a division both could happily live with. 1 This became, for Harrington, a parable about the virtues of bicameralism —a legislature comprised of two chambers with each holding a veto over the other. * Actually, Harrington exclaimed, “Mon Dieu!” Note that the lowercase “republican” refers to a form of government and not the (uppercase) Republican Party. The same case distinction applies to “democratic” and the Democratic Party. Both of these forms of government are examined later in the chapter. More than one hundred years after Harrington’s treatise, the Framers of the Constitution spent the entire summer of 1787 in Philadelphia debating what new rules and offices to create for their fledgling government. They were guided by their best guesses about how the alternatives they were contemplating would affect the interests of their states and the preferences of their constituencies (see Chapter 2 ). The result of their efforts, the Constitution, is a collection of rules fundamentally akin to the one discovered by the girls in Harrington’s story. (Think about it: both the House of Representatives and the Senate must agree to a bill before it can be sent to the president to be signed into law.) The events in Philadelphia remind us that however lofty the goal that gives rise to reform, institutional design is a product of politics. As a result, institutions may confer advantages on some interests over others. Indeed, sometimes one side, enjoying a temporary advantage, will try to permanently implant its preferences in difficult-to-change rules and procedures. The present-day Department of Education, for example, arose from the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1977 after newly elected president Jimmy Carter proposed this split as a reward for early support from teacher organizations that had long regarded a separate department as key to their ability to win increased federal funding for schools and teacher training. The history of this department bears out the wisdom of their strategy. Republican Ronald Reagan followed Carter into the White House with the full intention of returning the education bureaucracy to its former status. But before long the cabinet secretary he appointed to dismantle the department began championing it, as did many Republicans in Congress whose committees oversaw the department’s activities and budgets. Nearly four decades later, the Department of Education is entrenched in Washington, and as we found in the introduction, national education policy has become a central issue for politicians from both political parties. Constitutions and Governments All organizations are governed by rules and procedures for making and implementing decisions. Within colleges and universities, the student government, the faculty senate, staff associations, academic departments, and, of course, the university itself follow rules and procedures when transacting regular business. Although rules and procedures go by different names (for example, constitution , bylaw , charter ), their purpose is the same: to guide an organization’s members in making essentially political decisions—that is, decisions in which the participants initially disagree about what they would like the organization to do. And what happens when the organization is a nation? Consider the problems: the number of participants is great, the many unsettled issues are complex, and each participant’s performance in living up to agreements cannot be easily monitored. Yet even with their conflicts, entire populations engage in politics every day. Their degree of success depends largely on whether they have developed constitutions and governments that work. The constitution of a nation establishes its governing institutions and the set of rules and procedures these institutions must (and must not) follow to reach and enforce collective agreements . A constitution may be a highly formal legal document, such as that of the United States, or it may resemble Britain’s unwritten constitution, an informal “understanding” based on centuries of precedents and laws. A government , then, consists of these institutions and the legally prescribed process for making and enforcing collective agreements. Governments may assume various forms, including a monarchy, a representative democracy, a theocracy (a government of religious leaders), or a dictatorship. Authority versus Power The simple observation that governments are composed of institutions actually says a great deal and implies even more. Government institutions consist of offices that confer on their occupants specific authority and responsibilities. Rules and procedures prescribe how an institution transacts business and what authority relations will link offices together. Authority is the acknowledged right to make a particular decision. Only the president possesses the authority to nominate federal judges. However, a majority of the Senate’s membership retains sole authority to confirm these appointments and allow the nominees to take office. Authority is distinguishable from power , a related but broader concept that we employ throughout the book. Power refers to a politician’s actual influence over others whose cooperation she needs in order to achieve her political goals. An office’s authority is an important ingredient, conferring influence—that is, power—to those who enlist it skillfully. For instance, President Trump has the authority to instruct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test alternative prototypes for a new and extended wall at the U.S.-Mexican border. As of the fall of 2018, however, he did not have the authority to spend the billions necessary to build the wall. This authority rests with Congress. Whether Trump succeeds in achieving this major campaign promise will rest on his ability to persuade Congress to give him the necessary funds to build the wall. His success or failure in persuading Congress to appropriate the money will be a measure of his power. Another instructive example of the distinction between authority and power comes from the same time in the Trump presidency. For months, the president tweeted almost nightly his displeasure with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At one point, he even proclaimed, “I don’t have an Attorney General, Very Sad.” So why did Trump continue to rant for months, even calling Sessions a “wimp” and “ignorant” and a “Mr. Magoo” (a cartoon bumpkin), instead of just firing him? Unquestionably, the Constitution gives him the authority to do so. He might well have hesitated because Republicans in Washington cautioned that firing Sessions might lead the public and politicians to conclude that he was trying to cover up misdeeds and that he deserved to be impeached. So, here the president has the authority, but to use it might be so risky that one could say he lacked the power to fire his subordinate. Prototypes of President Donald Trump’s southern border wall built near San Diego, California. GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images Institutional Durability Institutions are by no means unchangeable, but they tend to be stable and resist change for several reasons. First, with authority assigned to the office, not to the individual holding the office, established institutions persist well beyond the tenure of the individuals who occupy them. A university remains the same institution even though all of its students, professors, and administrators are eventually replaced. Institutions, therefore, contribute a fundamental continuity and orderliness to collective action. Second, the people affected by institutions make plans on the expectation that current arrangements will remain. Imagine how senior college students would react if, during their last semester, their college or university increased the required course units for a degree. Or consider the anxiety the millions of workers approaching retirement must feel whenever politicians in Washington talk about changing Social Security. * * In his 2005 State of the Union address President George W. Bush sought to reassure the most anxious segment of the public approaching retirement —specifically, those over age fifty-five—that his sweeping reform proposal would not apply to them. Sometimes institutions are altered to make them perform more efficiently or to accomplish new collective goals. In 1970 an executive reorganization plan consolidated components of five executive departments and agencies into a single independent agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, with a strong mandate and commensurate regulatory authority to protect the environment. By coordinating their actions and centralizing authority, these formerly dispersed agencies could more effectively monitor and regulate polluting industries. The Political System’s Logic The quality of democracy in modern America reflects the quality of its governing institutions. Embedded in these institutions are certain core values, such as the belief that those entrusted with important government authority must periodically stand before the citizenry in elections. Balanced against this ideal of popular rule is the equally fundamental belief that government must protect certain individual liberties even when a majority of the public insists otherwise. Throughout this text we find politicians and citizens disagreeing on the precise meaning of these basic beliefs and values as they are applied or redefined to fit modern society. Also embedded in these institutions—initially by the Framers of the Constitution and later by amendment and two centuries of precedents based on past political practices—is a logic based on principles about how members of a community should engage one another politically to identify and pursue their common goals. Although the Framers did not use the vocabulary of modern political science, they intuitively discerned this logic and realized that they must apply it correctly if the “American Experiment” were to succeed. * For us, too, this logic is essential for understanding the behavior of America’s political institutions, the politicians who occupy them, and the citizens who monitor politicians’ actions. To that end, the concepts presented in the remainder of this chapter are the keys to “open up” America’s political institutions and to reveal their underlying logic. We begin with the problems (or one can think of them as puzzles) that confront all attempts at collective action. Many institutional arrangements have been devised over time to solve these problems. Those we examine here are especially important to America’s political system, and the concepts reappear as key issues throughout the book. * They were, after all, contemporaries of Isaac Newton and found in his theory of mechanics inspiration to search for similar natural laws to create a well-functioning polity. With Britain’s monarchy the only real-world model to guide them—and one they tended to judge more as a model of what to avoid than to emulate—the Framers depended heavily on carefully reasoned ideas, which took them to Newtonian physics. Consequently, the terms force , counterweight , and balance were familiarly used during debates at the Constitutional Convention and by both sides in the Constitution’s subsequent ratification campaign. Collective Action Problems By virtue of their size and complexity, nations encounter special difficulties in conducting political business. In those nations where citizens participate in decisions through voting and other civic activities, still more complex issues arise. Successful collective action challenges a group’s members to figure out what they want to do and how to do it. The former involves comparing preferences and finding a course of action that sufficient numbers of participants agree is preferable to proposed alternatives or to doing nothing. The latter concerns implementation—not just the nuts and bolts of performing some task, but reassuring participants that everyone will share the costs (such as taxes) and otherwise live up to agreements. Even when members basically agree to solve a problem or achieve some other collective goal, there is no guarantee that they will find a solution and implement it. Two fundamental barriers—coordination problems and prisoner’s dilemmas—may block effective collective action. Coordination can be problematic at both stages of collective action—as members decide to undertake a task and subsequently work together to achieve it. Coordination in making a joint decision mostly involves members sharing information about their preferences; coordination in undertaking a collective effort involves effectively organizing everyone’s contribution. On this second matter, coordination may become problematic when individual members realize that the success of the collective enterprise will depend on their contribution, which may be costly. For instance, individual members may be asked to make a severe contribution such as going to war, and despite their costly effort, the collective effort might fail. This fundamental problem introduces a class of issues commonly referred to as the prisoner’s dilemma . It refers to a variety of settings in which individuals find themselves personally better off by pursuing their private interests and undermining the collective effort even when they want it to succeed. Prisoner’s dilemmas pervade all of politics, from neighbors petitioning city hall for a stop sign to legislators collaborating to strike budget deals in Congress. These dilemmas especially interest us because the “solution”—that is, having everyone contribute to the collective undertaking—depends heavily on providing the kinds of incentives to individuals that governments are well suited to provide. Coordination Whether in deciding what to do or how to do it, coordination is more difficult for large than for small groups. Several friends can easily share their preferences in great detail on how to spend the weekend together. Now consider Republican voters in the spring of 2016 trying to decide who their presidential nominee should be. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey in early March found 30 percent favoring Donald Trump, with Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio following with 27, 22, and 20 percent support, respectively. But this only scratched the surface of their preferences on what they wanted their party to do. The survey followed up by pitting Trump against each of the other candidates in a two-man race. In Figure 1.1 we find that Trump loses each contest. A lot of Republican respondents to the survey wanted anyone but Trump. Each candidate’s “true” supporters teamed with the “anyone but Trump” respondents formed a clear majority. But as primaries and caucuses continued through early June, the coordination problem persisted. In the end, the “anyone but Trump” Republicans never managed to coordinate on an alternative candidate. Now consider how size affects the capacity of a group to coordinate in achieving an agreed-to goal. Here, a classical music performance offers an education in the costs of coordinating collective action. During a concert the members of a string quartet coordinate their individual performances by spending nearly as much time looking at one another as they do following their music. Volume, tempo, and ornamentation must all be executed precisely and in tandem. By the end of a successful concert, the effort required is evident on the triumphant musicians’ perspiring faces. A symphony orchestra, by contrast, achieves comparable coordination, despite its greater numbers, by retaining one of its members to put aside the musical instrument and take up the conductor’s baton. By focusing on the conductor, orchestra members are able to coordinate their playing and produce beautiful music. And at the end of the concert, the conductor is the first one to mop a perspiring brow. Figure 1.1 Republican Voters Trying to Coordinate in the Selection of Their Party’s Nominee Source: NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, March 3–6, 2016, N = 397 Republican primary voters nationwide. Note: The percentages do not add up to 100 because a few respondents refused to pick either candidate. Large groups trying to reach a shared goal might emulate the symphony in designating and following a leader. Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate configure procedures to enable Congress to decide policy for the hundreds of issues presented each session. But to achieve the same objective, the 435-member House and the 100-member Senate proceed differently, following a logic reflecting the size of their organizations. The House delegates to a Rules Committee the responsibility for scheduling the flow of legislation onto the floor and setting limits on deliberations and amendments. This important committee becomes the “leader” in setting the body’s agenda. The entire House cedes this authority to a committee because coordination is vital if the chamber is to identify and pass the most preferred legislation. By contrast, the smaller Senate has found that it can achieve comparable levels of coordination without having to surrender authority to a specialized committee. In the Senate, informal discussions among members and party leaders suffice. When the number of participants desiring to coordinate is very large—say, a state’s voters—coordination may generally be unachievable. This explains why a society’s collective decisions are generally delegated to a small group of professionals, namely politicians , who intensively engage one another in structured settings, namely government, to discover mutually attractive collective decisions. The challenges to successful coordination increase with size. For some problems simple, self-enforcing rules—such as traffic staying to the right side of the street—might be all that is required. For other kinds of collective choices, institutions severely limit options, allowing like-minded individuals to coordinate easily. Political party nominations offer voters an obvious common choice. Successful mass coordination occasionally arises even in the absence of institutions channeling individuals’ choices. The 2012 presidential primaries saw conservative Republican voters race en masse from one candidate to another in search of an alternative—apparently any alternative —to the moderate and eventual winner Mitt Romney. As displayed in Figure 1.2 , four of Romney’s serious challengers for the nomination briefly achieved front-runner status in the public opinion polls. On reaching the top of the pile, each faltered and was quickly discarded by voters in favor of yet another “anyone but Romney” nominee. Eventually, they all stumbled badly, leaving Romney the only viable candidate still in the race. At this point, conservative Republicans switched their mantra to “anyone but Obama” and rallied behind their party’s nominee. Among the several surprising outcomes in this chronology is the speed with which Republican voters’ preferences switched from one candidate to another. How, for example, did so many survey respondents manage to shift from front-runner Rick Perry (after he forgot the names of several government departments he promised to disband) to Herman Cain, who until Perry’s debate fiasco had barely registered a blip in the polls? In such instances a critical ingredient of success lies in identifying a common focal point to help individuals target their energies toward a common purpose. A focal point is some prominent cue that helps individuals recognize the preferences of others with whom they want to cooperate. A strong debate performance might win some supporters, but equally important, it might identify to all the candidates who will attract the most support. Similarly, a narrow victory in a state delegate caucus could signal which candidate all like-minded voters should gather behind. Or endorsement by some accepted authority—like the conservative Tea Party movement—could concentrate support. Each of these kinds of focal point cues guided conservative Republicans as they settled on an “anyone but Romney” alternative who, shortly thereafter, displayed some fatal flaw that sent them searching for another candidate. Figure 1.2 Republicans Pick a Presidential Nominee, 2012 Source: Data from RealClearPolitics.com, 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination, accessed at www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presid ential_nomination-1452.html#polls . Internet-based social networks offer levels of focal point coordination unimaginable in earlier decades. A remarkable example of nearly spontaneously coordinated protest activity occurred in 2006, when a Los Angeles union and church organized a protest march against anti-immigrant legislation under consideration by the House of Representatives. The organizers hoped to arouse twenty thousand participants, but after they persuaded several Spanish-radio DJs to publicize the rally, over half a million protesters showed up. The size of the turnout amazed everyone, including the organizers, and the crowd quickly overwhelmed the police force. Clearly, there was a pent-up demand needing only a cue as to when and where everyone would show up. Coordination problems essentially arise from uncertainty and insufficient information and may prevent collective undertakings even when a great majority agrees on a course of action, such as Republicans’ desire to win back the presidency in 2012. We now turn to potentially more problematic challenges to collective action—the problems of the prisoner’s dilemma. Unlike a lack of coordination, where mutual ignorance prevents participants from identifying and working together for a common goal, prisoner’s dilemma problems find participants privately calculating that they would be better off by not contributing to the collective action even when they wholeheartedly agree with its purpose. Where coordination problems frequently require no more than direction and information, prisoner’s dilemmas generally necessitate monitoring and the threat of coercion. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Since it was first formally introduced in the late 1950s, the prisoner’s dilemma has become one of the most widely used concepts in the social sciences. A casual Google search generated over half a million hits on this phrase, bringing up websites on subjects far afield from political science and economics (where systematic consideration of the concept originated), including psychiatry, evolutionary biology, and drama theory. The prisoner’s dilemma depicts a specific tension in social relations, one long intuitively understood by political thinkers. Solving this dilemma fundamentally distinguishes political success and failure and is a cornerstone of our inquiry. What precisely is the prisoner’s dilemma, and why is it so important for the study of American politics? The prisoner’s dilemma arises whenever individuals who ultimately would benefit from cooperating with each other also have a powerful and irresistible incentive to break the agreement and exploit the other side. Only when each party is confident that the other will live up to an agreement can they successfully break out of the dilemma and work to their mutual advantage. A simple example of how this works is the original exercise that gives the prisoner’s dilemma its name. In the movie stills from the 1941 drama I Wake Up Screaming (see photos), homicide detectives are subjecting screen legends Victor Mature and Betty Grable to the prisoner’s dilemma. Specifically, each murder suspect is being advised to confess and testify against the other, in return for a lighter prison sentence. The diagram on the next page maps out the likely prison term each faces. Deep down Mature and Grable know that the police do not have enough evidence to convict them of murder. All they have to do is stick to their story (i.e., cooperate), and, at worst, they may have to spend six months in jail on a gun possession charge. If both were to confess, each would get a five-year sentence. Each of them is offered a deal: in exchange for a full confession, the “squealer” will get off scot-free, whereas the “fall guy” or “sucker” will be convicted and likely receive a ten-year prison term. In the movie both suspects are isolated in their cells for a few days, with the detectives hinting that their partner is “singing like a canary.” As the days pass, each begins to recognize the other’s character flaws and panics. If Mature squeals, Grable realizes, she must also in order to avoid a ten-year stretch. If, however, she has underestimated his virtues and he holds out, well, that would be unfortunate, but she gains some solace in knowing that her lone confession will be her “get-out-of-jail” card. Of course, Mature, stewing in his cell, reaches the same conclusion. Why this movie presents a genuine dilemma is that in this setting confessing offers the best outcome for each suspect, regardless of what the other individual does. So, in the end, they both confess and spend the next five years in the slammer. * * For this reason police have traditionally objected to giving suspects early access to lawyers, who might help the otherwise isolated prisoners coordinate their plan. But this is a different story we return to in Chapter 5 . By the way, the movie offers a happy ending. Victor Mature Stays Silent Betty Grable Confesses Stays silent 6 months, 6 months 10 years, no jail Confesses No jail, 10 years 5 years, 5 years (Grable’s sentence is listed first.) Subjected to the classic prisoner’s dilemma interrogation, Victor Mature and Betty Grable turn out to have nothing to confess in the 1941 whodunit I Wake Up Screaming . Since its introduction in the 1950s, thousands of articles have enlisted this metaphor to explore the fundamental conflict between what is rational behavior for each member of a group and what is in the best interest of the group as a whole. 20th Century Fox/Photofest 20th Century Fox/Photofest So what does this dilemma have to do with American politics? Everything. Every successful political exchange must tacitly solve the prisoner’s dilemma. Exchanges occur because each side recognizes that it will be better off with a collective outcome rather than with trying to act alone. Had Mature and Grable somehow managed to stay silent, their cooperation would have shaved all but six months from their five-year terms. And both knew this. Yet neither could be sure the other confederate would stay silent. To get something worthwhile, both sides must typically give up something of value in return. The moral: unless participants in a collective decision can trust each other to abide by their commitments, they will not achieve a mutually profitable exchange. How do the Matures and Grables shift the outcome from that quadrant, where neither cooperates, to the one where they both do? One solution involves making reneging and defection very expensive. In some settings this can be achieved informally. For example, politicians who repeatedly make campaign promises that they subsequently fail to act on lose credibility with voters and become vulnerable to defeat in the next election. Once in office, reneging on an agreement will quickly damage a politician’s reputation, and others will refuse to deal with her in the future. Where failure to live up to one’s agreements imposes costs down the road, politicians will think twice before doing so. Another common solution is to create institutions that help parties discover opportunities to profit through cooperation and, most important, guarantee that agreements are honored. Here government’s coercive authority is useful. An anthropologist once reported that two tribes in a remote region of New Guinea lived in a state of continual warfare, to the point that many more men from both tribes had died in battle than from natural causes. The anthropologist summed up their dilemma: “In the absence of any central authority, they are condemned to fight forever . . . since for any group to cease defending itself would be suicidal.” He added that these tribes might “welcome pacification.” One day the distant government in Papua sent a ranger armed with a handgun to establish territorial boundaries between the tribes and rules governing their chance encounters. Suddenly, the decadeslong warfare ended. Each side believed the ranger with his single sidearm presented sufficient force to punish any breaches (defection) of the peace agreements, and the now-peaceful neighbors began to use politics—not war —to solve their conflicts. 2 Members of a society must be able to engage one another politically. Without confidence that agreements will be enforced, the political process quickly unravels. Participants will balk at undertaking mutual obligations they suspect their bargaining partners will not honor. In his 1651 treatise on the origin and purposes of government, Leviathan , political philosopher Thomas Hobbes examined the straits to which society is reduced when its government is unable to enforce collective obligations and agreements. (See the Logic of Politics box “Hobbes on Monarchs.”) In a famous passage he warned that life would return to “a state of nature . . . solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” 3 The mortality rate of New Guinea tribesmen confirmed Hobbes’s insight. They were not naturally combative; rather, these tribes simply could not trust each other. Thus enforcement succeeded in encouraging cooperation, but not through flaunting overwhelming force or imposing a solution on the contending parties. The ranger’s presence simply rendered any party’s defection costlier than its compliance. Hopefully, the relevance of the prisoner’s dilemma to American politics is becoming clearer. Virtually every policy the government adopts represents a successful resolution of this dilemma. Constituencies and their representatives cooperate to achieve their separate goals—recall our definition of politics earlier—because institutions have developed to help diverse constituencies discover opportunities for mutual gain through cooperation and, just as important, to deter them from reneging on their agreements. Like the ranger with a handgun from Papua, America’s political institutions foster collective action by solving the prisoner’s dilemma. Logic of Politics Hobbes on Monarchs In 1651 Thomas Hobbes argued in Leviathan , one of the most important books in political theory, that the English monarch was a necessary guarantor of collective agreements. a He proposed that because the king and his offspring derived their wealth directly from the population in taxes and labor, they would pursue the nation’s welfare because it would enrich them as well. Even if the monarch were wicked and expropriated too much of the nation’s wealth for himself, the citizenry was still better off with him wielding power arbitrarily than if no one had enforcement authority. Restated in the vocabulary of this text, Hobbes argued that monarchs offered a cost-effective means to collective action. a. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The matter, forme, & power of a commonwealth ecclesiasticall and civill (1651; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). North Wind Picture Archives There are failures, to be sure. Antitrust laws are designed to prevent competitors in the marketplace from colluding to fix prices or restrain trade in other ways, but they can have unintended consequences. For instance, in 2014 new oil production technologies combined with a slumping world economy to suddenly create a worldwide oversupply of oil. Crude oil prices plummeted to less than half their value of a couple of years earlier, leaving the American oil industry in a predicament. Many drillers that had recently taken on debt to expand production now found themselves contributing to an oil glut. One obvious solution would be for everyone to cut back production. And yet, unable to coordinate, they individually drilled harder to service their debt in the face of depressed prices while hoping that their competitors would cut back. 4 Other issues simply do not offer mutual gains through cooperation. One party’s gain is the other’s loss, and politics may break down and give way to force. National policy on rights to abortion frequently becomes just such an issue where irreconcilable preferences seek to control policy. Chapter 4 recounts the most intractable issue of all in American political history—the failure, despite repeated compromise attempts, to come up with a policy on slavery’s extension into the territories during the 1850s. This issue was resolved only by the deadliest war of its time. Even when each side can envision opportunities for mutual gains, American politics is far from failure proof. Everyone agrees that in several decades the Social Security program will be unable to keep up current levels of benefits long before the millennial generation approaches retirement. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington want to fix it, and from time to time one side will gingerly make an overture to the other. But all of the solutions are costly or otherwise unpopular, either requiring hefty new taxes or curtailing benefits. Both political parties worry that as soon as they offer a tough solution, the other side will exploit it to score points in the next election. Until politicians figure out a way to cooperate and share the blame, Social Security reform will remain the proverbial “third rail” of politics: “Touch it and you are dead.” * * The third rail metaphor refers to the third rail of subway tracks, the one that carries the electricity. Free-Rider Problem A form of the prisoner’s dilemma that afflicts large groups is the free-rider problem . Whenever an individual’s contribution to the success of the collective effort is so small as to seem inconsequential, one will be tempted to free ride—that is, to fail to contribute to the group’s undertaking while enjoying the benefits of its success. Even those who enthusiastically support the group’s goal realize that they can escape fulfilling their obligations. When the motivation to free ride is a serious possibility, several outcomes are possible. First, it may stymie collective action altogether. Just knowing that the other participants might free ride might at times even dissuade those ready to pony up their share of money or effort from doing so. If many people react this way—and many do—a
