Title
Governing for the long term [electronic resource] : democracy and the politics of investment / Alan M. Jacobs.
ISBN
9780521195850
9781139079945 (electronic book)
Imprint
Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Language
English
Description
xv, 306 p. : ill.
Call Number
HN28 .J29 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
331.25/2
Summary
"This book examines how democratic governments manage long-term policy challenges, asking how elected politicians choose between providing policy benefits in the present and investing in the future"-- Provided by publisher.
"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"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Machine generated contents note: 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.
