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Why Government Fails So Often
Peter Schuck
And How It Can Do Better
Princeton University Press
April 2014
On Sale: March 30, 2014
488 pages
ISBN: 0691161623
EAN: 9780691161624
Kindle: B00GVHXJRW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Political
From healthcare to workplace conduct, the federal government
is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our
lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more
disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive,
incompetent, wasteful giant. The most alarming consequence
of ineffective policies, in addition to unrealized social
goals, is the growing threat to the government's democratic
legitimacy. Understanding why government fails so often--and
how it might become more effective--is an urgent
responsibility of citizenship. In this book, lawyer and
political scientist Peter Schuck provides a wide range of
examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so
many domestic policies go awry--and how to right the
foundering ship of state. Schuck argues that Washington's failures are due not to
episodic problems or partisan bickering, but rather to deep
structural flaws that undermine every administration,
Democratic and Republican. These recurrent weaknesses
include unrealistic goals, perverse incentives, poor and
distorted information, systemic irrationality, rigidity and
lack of credibility, a mediocre bureaucracy, powerful and
inescapable markets, and the inherent limits of law. To
counteract each of these problems, Schuck proposes numerous
achievable reforms, from avoiding moral hazard in student
loan, mortgage, and other subsidy programs, to empowering
consumers of public services, simplifying programs and
testing them for cost-effectiveness, and increasing the use
of "big data." The book also examines successful
policies--including the G.I. Bill, the Voting Rights Act,
the Earned Income Tax Credit, and airline deregulation--to
highlight the factors that made them work. An urgent call for reform, Why Government Fails So Often is
essential reading for anyone curious about why government is
in such disrepute and how it can do better.
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