Governing for the long term democracy and the politics of investment / [electronic resource] :
Alan M. Jacobs.
- Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- xv, 306 p. : ill.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
"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"-- "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"--
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest, 2015. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest affiliated libraries.
9781139079945 (electronic bk.)
Social policy. Social choice. Political planning. Welfare economics. Externalities (Economics)--Political aspects. Pensions--Government policy--Case studies.