Governing for the long term : democracy and the politics of investment / Alan M. Jacobs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobs, Alan M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social policy.

Social choice.

Political planning.

Welfare economics.

Externalities (Economics)--Political aspects.

Externalities (Economics).

Pensions--Government policy--Case studies.

Pensions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 306 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-21459-9

1-139-06314-6

1-283-11093-8

9786613110930

1-139-07539-X

0-511-92176-4

1-139-07994-8

1-139-07765-1

1-139-06963-2

1-139-08221-3

OCLC:

726734769