Means, Motives, and Opportunities

How Executives and Interest Groups Set Public Policy

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

AvChristian Breunig,Chris Koski

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Means, Motives, and Opportunities illuminates how states spend public money through the lens of governmental structure, executive power, and interest group competition. Christian Breunig and Chris Koski argue that policymaking is a function of not only policymakers' means (powers), but of their motives (issues) and opportunities (interest group competition) for change. Using over twenty-five years of data across all fifty US states, four in-depth case studies, and multiple examples of budget battles, the book describes a budget-making environment in which governors must balance the preferences of interest groups with their own, all while attempting to build a budget that roughly balances. While governors are uniquely powerful, the range of changes they can make is largely impacted by interest group competition. By showing how means, motives, and opportunities matter, the book shows how spending decisions at the state level influence nearly every aspect of American life.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-02-08
Mått160 x 235 x 25 mm
Vikt586 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor300
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781009428590

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Christian Breunig is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Konstanz and Director of the German Policy Agendas project. He has received three awards from the American Political Science Association and was a policy fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2022–23. Chris Koski is Professor of Political Science and Daniel B. Greenberg Chair of Environmental Studies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He chaired the Public Policy (2022–23) and Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (2020–23) sections of the American Political Science Association and is the co-author of The Real World of American Politics: A Documentary Introduction (2022).

List of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgements; Part I. Setting Public Policy: 1. Explaining One Million Policy Stories; 2. Meeting at the Margins: Interests and Governors in Public Budgeting; Part II. Motives, Opportunities, and Means of Policy Change: 3. Motives: Issues of the Moment(s); 4. Opportunities: Interest Groups and their Budgetary Issues; 5. Means: How Governors Shape Budgetary Outcomes; 6. How Interests and Executives Set Public Policy in Four States with Nat Rubin; Part III. Public Policy and Budgeting in the American States: 7. Conclusion: Public Government of Public Monies; Bibliography; Index.

'Breunig and Koski provide a comprehensive analysis of public budgeting in the US states, looking across a long span of time, at all fifty states, and assessing the respective roles of governors and interest groups in the process. They move from illustrations to state-focused case studies to comprehensive statistical analyses with ease. They offer much to like for a wide range of audiences: those interested in state politics, interest groups, gubernatorial power, the ability of our states to adapt to changing circumstances, and those interested in what makes good public policy. More importantly, they contribute mightily to policy theory by making sense of so much with such a simple theoretical framework: motives, opportunities, and means. The result is a must-read book that will stand the test of time.' Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill