Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better (67 page)

80
. Winston,
Government Failure versus Market Failure
, 3.

81
. E. J. Dionne Jr., remark at Brookings Institution workshop for the present volume, May 30, 2013.

82
. Steven Kelman,
Making Public Policy: A Hopeful View of American Government
(1987), 271–72.

83
. See, e.g., “D.C.’s Davis-Bacon Revolt,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 7, 2013.

84
. Isaiah Berlin,
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
(1990). The phrase is taken from Kant.

85
. Jones et al.,
Do Americans Believe Capitalism and Government Are Working?
, 13.

86
. See, e.g., Michael Sandel,
What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
(2012).

87
. See Charles de Secondat Montesquieu,
The Spirit of the Laws
(1748) (“Commerce cures destructive prejudices…. It polishes and softens barbarous mores….”); and Adam Smith,
Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms
, ed. Edwin Cannan (1896), 253 (“Whenever commerce is introduced into any country probity and punctuality always accompany it.”). For modern defenses of the morality of the market, see Arthur C. Brooks,
The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future
(2010); Michael Novak,
Toward a Theology of the Corporation
(1990). See also Daniel Markovits, “Market Solidarity,” lecture presented at Yale Law School, April 9, 2012.

88
. See, e.g., Robert Wuthnow, “Religion,” in Schuck & Wilson, eds.,
Understanding America
, chap. 10.

89
. James Q. Wilson, “Conclusion: America versus the World,” in
American Politics, Then and Now
, 194–95.

90
. For the provenance of this quote, see
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan
.

91
. Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,”
American Sociologial Review
1 (1936): 895.

92
. This distinction was made by Charles E. Lindblom in his classic “The Science of ‘Muddling Through,’ ”
Public Administration Review
19 (1959): 79–88.

93
. Peter H. Schuck,
Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics
(2006).

CHAPTER 2: SUCCESS, FAILURE, AND IN BETWEEN

1
. Peter H. Schuck & Richard J. Zeckhauser,
Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples
(2006).

2
. Ibid., 41.

3
. Jeffrey L. Pressman & Aaron Wildavsky,
How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It’s Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes
, 3d ed. (1984), xxiii.

4
. Herbert A. Simon,
Administrative Behavior
, 3rd ed. (1976), 38–41.

5
. Pressman & Wildavsky,
How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland
, 113–16.

6
.
Simon,
Administrative Behavior
.

7
. Kenneth J. Arrow,
Social Choice and Individual Values
, 2nd ed. (1963).

8
. Steven Kelman,
Making Public Policy: A Hopeful View of Government
(1987), 208.

9
. See, e.g., Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell,
Fairness versus Welfare
(2002).

10
. See, e.g., Susan Rose-Ackerman & Thomas Perroud, “Policymaking and Public Law in France: Public Participation, Agency Independence, and Impact Assessment,” 19
Columbia Journal of European Law
223 (2013), especially part 4.

11
. Stuart Shapiro, “The Evolution of Cost-Benefit Analysis in U.S. Regulatory Decisionmaking,” in David Levi-Faur, ed.,
Handbook on Politics of Regulation
(2011), 385.

12
. See, e.g., Matthew D. Adler & Eric A. Posner,
New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis
(2006); Richard L. Revesz & Michael A. Livermore,
Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health
(2011); Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling,
Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
(2004); and Cass R. Sunstein:
The Cost-Benefit State: The Future of Regulatory Protection
(2003).

13
. This has been called the “cost of costing.” Guido Calabresi & Philip Bobbitt,
Tragic Choices: The Conflicts That Society Confronts in the Allocation of Tragically Scarce Resources
(1978), 21.

14
. Mark H. Moore,
Recognizing Public Value
(2013).

15
. Jonathan S. Masur & Eric A. Posner, “Regulation, Unemployment, and Cost-Benefit Analysis,”
Virginia Law Review
98 (2012): 579–634.

16
. See Cass R. Sunstein, “The Value of A Statistical Life: Some Clarifications and Puzzles” (unpublished manuscript, 2013).

17
. I thank Henry Aaron for making this point, analogizing to partial and general equilibrium analysis.

18
. Daniel H. Cole, “Reconciling Cost-Benefit Analysis with the Precautionary Principle” (unpublished manuscript, 2012).

19
. See, e.g., Gregory C. Keating, “Beyond Efficient Precaution: The Asymmetry of Harm and Benefit” (unpublished manuscript, 2012).

20
. For some examples, see “The Rule of More,”
Economist
, February 18, 2012, 77.

21
. “The ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ Gambit,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 28, 2013.

22
.
http://www.cdc/gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/laws-regs/hiv-ban-removal/final-rule.html
.

23
. Bjorn Lomberg, “An Economic Approach to the Environment,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 23, 2012,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577356414271425218.html
.

24
. Clifford Winston,
Government Failure versus Market Failure: Microeconomics Policy Research and Government Performance
(2006), 3–4.

25
. Christopher DeMuth, “The Regulatory Budget,”
Regulation
, March–April 1980, 34.

26
. Stephen Breyer,
Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation
(1993).

27
. See generally, Schuck & Zeckhauser,
Targeting in Social Programs
.

28
. For a history of this distinction, see Michael B. Katz,
In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America
(1996).

29
. Philip E. Tetlock,
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
(2005), 231–33. Similar points about the marketplace of ideas are made in Richard A. Posner,
Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline
(2001). For a negative review of the latter, see David Brooks, “Notes from a Hanging Judge,”
New York Times Book Review
, January 13, 2002, 9.

30
. On the lack of voter incentives to gain this information, see, generally, Anthony Downs,
An Economic Theory of Democracy
(1957).

31
. U.S. Office of Management & Budget,
2013 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Agency Compliance with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act
,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/2013_cb/draft_2013_cost_benefit_report.pdf
(discussing implementation of Executive Order No. 13563, January 18, 2011).

32
. Tetlock,
Expert Political Judgment
, Methodological Appendix, 239ff.

33
. David A. Hyman, “Why Did Law Professors Misunderestimate the Lawsuits against PPACA?”
University of Illinois Law Review
(forthcoming, 2014).

34
. David L. Rosenhan, “Warning Third Parties: The Ripple Effects of
Tarasoff
,”
Pacific Law Journal
24 (1993): 1185–89.

35
. William Goldman,
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood
(1983).

36
. Ibid., 2, 268.

37
. Ibid., 22, 23, 75. See also Richard A. Posner’s assessment of the accuracy of an overlapping category, public intellectuals, in Posner,
Public Intellectuals
.

38
. Nate Silver,
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t
(2012); Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
, expanded ed. (2010).

39
. See, e.g., Tetlock,
Expert Political Judgment
; Zeljka Buturovik, “Putting Political Experts to the Test,”
Critical Review: A Journal of Politics & Society
22 (2011): 389–96; and Tamas Meszerics & Levente Littvay, “Pseudo-Wisdom and Intelligence Failures,”
International Journal of Intelligence & CounterIntelligence
23 (2009): 133–47. For a defense of climate change models, see William D. Nordhaus, “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong,”
New York Review of Books
, March 22, 2012,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/?pagination=false
.

40
. Steven Morrison & Clifford Winston,
The Economic Effects of Airline Deregulation
(1986).

41
. Elisabeth Bumiller, “One Year Later, Military Says Gay Policy Is Working,”
New York Times
, September 19, 2012.

42
. Ryan Grim & Zach Carter, “Bank of America Dropping Plan to Charge Monthly $5 Debit Card Fee,”
Huffington Post
, November 1, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/bank-of-america-debit-card-fee_n_1069425.html
.

43
. Jeffrey A. Jenkins & Eric M. Patashnik, “Living Legislation and American Politics,” in Jenkins & Patashnik, eds.,
Living Legislation: Durability, Change, and the Politics of American Lawmaking
(2012), 17. On the Tax Reform Act, see Eric M. Patashnik, “Why Some Reforms Last and Others Collapse: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 versus Airline Deregulation,” in Jenkins & Patashnik, eds.,
Living Legislation
, chap. 8.

44
. Jeff Bennett & Sharon Terlep, “U.S. Balks at GM Plan,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 17, 2012. On the Treasury’s slippery accounting methods for assessing this and other bailouts, see Gretchen Morgenson, “Seeing Bailouts through Rose-Colored Glasses,”
New York Times
, May 20, 2012 (economists’ critiques of the Treasury’s methodology).

45
. Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Plot Twist in the A.I.G. Bailout: It Actually Worked,”
New York Times
, September 10, 2012.

46
. The most prominent dissenter is Neil Barofsky, a former special inspector general overseeing the bailout programs and the author of
Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street by Rescuing Wall Street
(2012), who claims that the government has fudged its numbers to make the rescue seem successful. See also Gretchen Morgenson, “Banks, at Least, Had a Friend in Geithner,”
New York Times
, February 3, 2013 (quoting Dean Baker).

47
. Vesla M. Weaver, “The Significance of Policy Failures in Political Development: The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and the Growth of the Carceral State,” in Jenkins & Patashnik, eds.,
Living Legislation
, chap. 11.

48
. Harold Demsetz, “Information and Efficiency: Another Viewpoint,”
Journal of Law & Economics
12 (1969): 3.

49
. Ibid., 10–11.

50
. Derek Bok,
The Trouble with Government
(2001), 120–21.

CHAPTER 3: POLICY-MAKING FUNCTIONS, PROCESSES, MISSIONS, INSTRUMENTS, AND INSTITUTIONS

1
. See, e.g., James Q. Wilson, ed.,
The Politics of Regulation
(1980); and Peter H. Schuck, “The Politics of Regulation,”
Yale Law Journal
90 (1981): 702–25 (review of Wilson book).

2
. See, generally, Robert D. Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(2001). For my critique of Putnam, see Peter H. Schuck, “In Diversity We (Sorta) Trust,”
American Lawyer
, December 2007, 83–84.

3
. See, e.g., Eliot Cohen, “The Military,” in Peter H. Schuck & James Q. Wilson, eds.,
Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation
(2008), chap. 9.