Governing for the Long Term

Democracy and the Politics of Investment

Häftad, Engelska, 2011

AvAlan M. Jacobs,Vancouver) Jacobs, Alan M. (University of British Columbia

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In Governing for the Long Term, Alan M. Jacobs investigates the conditions under which elected governments invest in long-term social benefits at short-term social cost. Jacobs contends that, along the path to adoption, investment-oriented policies must surmount three distinct hurdles to future-oriented state action: a problem of electoral risk, rooted in the scarcity of voter attention; a problem of prediction, deriving from the complexity of long-term policy effects; and a problem of institutional capacity, arising from interest groups' preferences for distributive gains over intertemporal bargains. Testing this argument through a four-country historical analysis of pension policymaking, the book illuminates crucial differences between the causal logics of distributive and intertemporal politics and makes a case for bringing trade-offs over time to the center of the study of policymaking.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2011-03-28
Mått155 x 231 x 20 mm
Vikt460 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor324
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9780521171779

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Part I. Problem and Theory: 1. The politics of when; 2. Theorizing intertemporal policy choice; Part II. Programmatic Origins: Intertemporal Choice in Pension Design: 3. Investing in the state: the origins of German pensions, 1889; 4. The politics of mistrust: the origins of British pensions, 1925; 5. Investments as political constraint: the origins of US pensions, 1935; 6. Investing for the short term: the origins of Canadian pensions, 1965; Part III. Programmatic Change: Intertemporal Choice in Pension Reform: 7. Investment as last resort: reforming US pensions, 1977 and 1983; 8. Shifting the long-run burden: reforming British pensions, 1986; 9. Committing to investment: reforming Canadian pensions, 1998; 10. Constrained by uncertainty: reforming German pensions, 1989 and 2001; Part IV. Conclusion: 11. Understanding the politics of the long term.

“If you care about the future, read this book. Anyone who worries about receiving a pension check when they retire, hopes for investment in education for their children or grandchildren, or is concerned about the preservation of our environment, has to wonder why some elected governments impose short-term costs on their constituents to secure long-term social benefits while others do not. Alan Jacobs advances a theoretically rich argument about the circumstances under which governments make these kinds of policy investments for the future. This book is sophisticated, innovative, and insightful. It contributes to scholarly literatures on historical institutionalism, the politics of time, and the welfare state. But it also tells us something fundamentally important about the political world we inhabit.” —Erik Bleich, Middlebury College