Chapter 23: Who Governs?

-What policies the government adopts

-The politics of various policies
-Evaluating the traditional theories of political power:
Marxist, elitist, bureaucratic, pluralist
It is time to try to answer the questions with which this
book began. We want to know who governs and to what ends.
In this chapter we shall try to answer the first question; in the
next we shall say something about the second.
Describing, however precisely, government institutions
and political organizations is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for deciding who governs. Simply by choosing what
to emphasize and what to leave out, one can write an account
of the presidency that makes that institution seem
imperialistic or a pitiful, helpless giant (to use the
contrasting imagery of Arthur Schlesinger and Richard Nixon).
And depending on what issues one picks, one can characterize
congress as a gathering of zealots that whoops new legislation
through in record time (as it did when it passed the Social
Security Act and the law outlawing mandatory retirement) or
as an elephantine institution bogged down by its own
convoluted procedures and internal quarrels (as it was when it
labored for months over an energy bill and health care reform).
Since we want to know who governs largely because our
lives are affected by the distribution of political power, it
seems only reasonable to try to answer the question of
governance by examining, as systematically as we can, what
policies the government adopts (or fails to adopt). A scheme
for classifying public policies was resented in Chapter 15. It
does not deserve to be called a theory, for there are many
policies that do not fit well into the classification, and the

distinctions that it suggests are crude and oversimplified. It

does have at least two advantages, though: it requires us to look
at a comprehensive list of policies (or nonpolicies) rather than
permitting us to generalize about politics on the bases of a few
issues in which we happen to be interested at the moment, and
it calls attention to important ways in which those policies are
thought to affect people (the distribution of perceived costs and
benefits). Let us begin by summarizing what we have learned
about the politics of making four kinds of policies and then use
that information as evidence to evaluate the competing theories
of political power that were described in Chapter 1.
Four Kinds Of Politics
-Majoritarian Politics
The costs and benefits of a proposed course of action are
sometimes seen by peoples as being widely distributed:
everybody, or almost everybody, or very broad groups of
people stand to gain or lose in roughly the same way. We have
seen several examples: the old-age and survivors insurance
provided under the 1935 Social Security Act; the medical
benefits offered under the 1965 Medicare Act; the fair trade
requirements of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the
Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914; the general foreign
policy posture of the United States (internationalist or
isolationist); the decisions to go to war in 1941, 1950, the 60s,
and 1991 (and to not go to war in 1914 and in 1954); those
features of macroeconomic policy that seem to contribute to
price stability and reasonably full employment; and the failure
of attempts to reduce automobile use. All these examples,
though different in substance, have in common the fact that
similar political institutions and actors tend to play the leading
policy-making roles.
Public Opinion Because matters like those listed above are
highly visible and seem to affect the country as a whole, public

opinion about them is usually discernible. Sometimes public

opinion is quite specific, such as when polls showed that a
majority of Americans wanted something very much like what
the Social Security and Medicare Acts ultimately provided.
Sometimes public opinion provides only a general direction but
no particular details to policy makers, such as when it inclines
toward internationalism or isolationism
And sometimes the public wants things that turn out to be
inconsistent, such as stable prices, full employment, and high
levels of government spending, all at the same time. But policy
makers are aware that public opinion does exist and that, even
when it lacks detail or consistency, it is ignore only at a
politicians peril. Citizens expect leadership and are willing to
tolerate both delays and gambles in its exercise, but in the long
run officials who ignore the thrust of public opinion or devise
policies that supply more costs than benefits are likely to suffer
at the polls. The republicans who oppose mush of the New
Deal misread public opinion or thought that they could defy it;
they learned differently in the Democratic sweep of 1936.
Democratic politicians were supported for a while in their
military policy in Vietnam, but by 1968 a majority of people
had decided that the policy was more of a burden than a benefit
and wanted a change. In 1980 the public was upset by inflation
and the hostage crisis in Iran; in 1992 they were concerned
about the economy and crime.
The president and his principal advisors tend to play a
leading, if not dominant, role in majoritarian politics. People
hold the president responsible for the economy, for national
defense, for social welfare, and for foreign policy. Sometimes,
as with foreign policy and military spending, that
accountability is well placed, for the president, constitutionally
and institutionally, plays the dominant role in these decisions.
Sometimes, as with the state of the economy, the president may

be as much a victim as an architect of the current state of

affairs, but no matter: he must act as if he could control things,
because people believe that he should be able to control them.
Ideological Debate
A proposal to adopt a wholly new
program that applies to many people often precipitates an
intense, sometimes ideological debate. Social Security and
Medicare were enacted after just such a debate; the Family
Assistance Plan was not enacted as a consequence of such a
debate. The struggles over whether to enter World War II
(neutrality vs. interventionism) in 1939-1941, over strategic
military doctrine in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, over
policy toward Central America in the 1980s, over whether the
nation should continue to follow Keynesian fiscal policy or
instead adopt the big tax cuts suggested by supply-side
economist- all these were genuine debates in which ideas as
much as interests played a decisive role.
Worldview
The outcome of such debates is often the
institutionalization of a new worldview. In the 1950s the
interventionists won out over the isolationists; the advocates of
a federal social-welfare policy defeated the supporters of
private charity and local relief programs; and the critics of big
business won at least a rhetorical advantage over the defenders
of large industrial trusts. In these struggles a crisis often
provided the decisive leverage: the Great Depression did for
welfare policy, the attack on Pearl Harbor did on foreign policy
and World War II did for fiscal policy. When the constraints of
public opinion are loose, as they are in foreign policy, the
worldview that is significant is that of policy elites who operate
in or close to government. When the constraints are tighter, as
they are in macroeconomic policy, elected officials discover
that their freedom of action is narrowed. Incumbent politicians
must balance national interests, as they define them, against
their need to get reelected, which often leads them to fund

certain programs- the sacred cows- more generously than

others and to sweeten a general tax cut with specific benefits
for particular groups.
But a crisis is not the only force that alters a popular or
elite worldview. Higher education, the mass media, changing
perceptions of the causes and consequences of various human
problems- all have had an effect on peoples ideas of what is
desirable public policy. The history of welfare legislation
provides a good example of how worldview changes and
evolves. It shows how a nation with a strong belief in selfreliance and the value of work has slowly modified (but not
abandoned) those ideas, first accepting aid to the elderly and
the infirm (on an insurance bases), then indorsing aid to the
unemployed and indigent, and then accepting some limited
forms of direct income support for the poor (whatever their age
or work experience) in the form of food stamps.
But thus far the changing popular definition of social
justice has not included large-scale income redistribution. And
one particularly visible form of welfare- Aid to Families with
Dependant Children- because it was not seen as a majoritarian
policy but one in which a client group (them) benefited at the
expense of society at large (us), has been discontinued.
Political Parties
When Congress is adopting new
majoritarian policies, political parties tend to be relatively
important. Many of the key issues in social welfare, economic
policy, and foreign affairs pit a substantial majority of
Democrats against a substantial majority of Republicans. In
policies of this sort Congress has acted more like a parliament
than an assemblage of independent legislators, debating broad
issues in partisan and even ideological terms. Often no new
policy can win if the parties are relatively evenly balanced in
Congress, because though Congress may debate in a
parliamentary style, it lacks the parliamentary discipline to

prevent a few defectors from one party or the other from

blocking change. As a result the victory of a new idea often
requires an election that gives one party an extraordinary
majority.
A majoritarian policy, ones adopted and proved to be
popular, tends to lose its ideological significance and to attract
bipartisan support, especially when government can readily
increase the level of benefits to the public (as with Social
Security and Medicare). However, if costs become very highas they may have for Medicare- the easy politics of
continually increasing benefits may come under closer
scrutiny.
-Interest Group Politics
When the costs of a policy are perceived concentrated on
one district, relatively small group and the benefits on a
different, equally distinct and small group, interest group
politics dominates the policy-making process. Interest groups
are active to some degree in almost all policy-making, of
course, but they are dominant political forces when costs and
benefits are distributed in this way. Labor legislation- the
National Labor Relations Act, the Taft-Hartley Act, the
Landrum-Griffin Act, and the bills- are obvious examples of
this. So also are the struggles between cable and over-the-air
television broadcasters, between domestic ethnic groups over
certain foreign policy matters and between importers and
exporters over tariff laws in regulations. Similarly, interest
group politics is evident in the tension between the Midwest
and Northeast over acid rain, between opposed interests in
cases involving right in conflicts (such as the right to a fair trial
vs. the right to publish news), between parties competing
before certain regulatory commissions (such as the
Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration), and between blacks and whites in

local communities with segregated schools.

Changing Cleavages in Society The sources of interest
group policy proposals are to be found in changing economic
and social cleavages in society. The rise of new technologies,
the altered shape of markets, the rise and decline of regions and
changes in the organizational skills and resources of previously
unorganized (or weakly organized) groups provided
opportunities for new interest group proposals. The debate over
the Commerce Act of 1887 was set off by declining profits on
the long-haul railroads, high monopolistic prices on many
short-haul lines, rivalry among port cities for cheap access to
the agricultural heart land of the country, and the rising
importance of national and international markets for
commercial farmers. Every interest had an incentive to
organize for political action.
Though usually interest group policies by their very
nature stimulate the organization of all relevant interests,
sometimes one group is able to block the organizing efforts of
its rival. Many industries were able to do this in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries with respect to would-be labor
unions; whites were able to do this in many communities with
respect to blacks and other racial minorities. These restraints on
equality of organizational opportunity were made possible by
the privileged access that one group already had to the coercive
powers of the government. Industries could for many years
count on the police and the army as allies in breaking strikes,
just as southern whites could use laws and administrative
regulations to keep large numbers of blacks from voting.
That privileged power position was sustained by widely
shared attitudes. Many people disapproved of unions or
objected to strikes that seemed intended to win exclusive
control by union over entry into a particular job market.
Similarly, many citizens either were prejudiced against blacks

or disapproved of blacks efforts to alter the distribution of

political power. When these restraints on equal organizational
opportunity existed, the disadvantaged group has had to
employ a variety of tactics to change popular attitudes, attract
legislative allies, and enlist the sympathy of the courts.
Political Parties
When a policy is proposed by one
interest group, and opposed by another of comparative political
power, the political parties will often be deeply divided and, as
a consequence play little or no role in the resolution of the
matter. The issue cuts across partisan lines, and unlike parties
in some European democracies, American parties are too weak
to overcome deep internal divisions. The passage of the
Commerce Act, for example, was not a partisan matter, and
both Democrats and Republicans were split for decades over
the question of civil rights. A few interest group conflicts
follow party linesfor example, labor-management issues
have tended to parallel Democratic-Republican differences.
But these are the exceptions.
Continuing Struggle
Interest group politics does not end
with the passage or defeat of the initial proposal. The struggle
continues in other placesin the bureaucracy, before the
courts, and in subsequent legislative sessions. The interest
group struggle that resulted in the passage of the National
Labor Relations Act and the Occupational Safety and Health
Act was transferred from the lobbies of congress to the offices
and corridors of the National Labor Relations Board and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Such agencies
are less likely to be captured by any single interest than are
those created as a result of client politics nor will the affected
interest groups accept gracefully the decisions of the
bureaucracy: appeals will be taken to the federal courts and
efforts will be made to get the law amended.

Public opinion and presidential leadership have some

effect on the outcome of these struggles, but except in the
formative stages that effect will ordinarily be weak. The public
at large cannot possibly become so well informed or so
concerned as to shape in important ways the conflict between
well organized vitally organized opponents. The president can
tilt the balance of power one way or another whom he chooses
to appoint to key bureaucratic agencies, but rarely does a
president try to shape directly, deeply, or in detail the outcome
of these conflicts. The public and the presidents are usually
content to hope that the right persons are put in charge of
refereeing interest group conflicts. And except to report on the
more important outcomes and occasional scandals associated
with interest group politics, the mass media rarely play an
important role.
-Client Politics
Sometimes the benefits of a policy are concentrated on one
relatively small, easily organized group, and the costs are
widely distributed over the public at large. In these cases client
politics arises. We find this happening when the merchant
marine receives a government subsidy, when veterans obtain
special benefits, when farmers defeat efforts to curtail sharply
the use of pesticides, and when various occupations are
allowed by state licensing laws to govern themselves. Client
politics is also at work when a community wishes to obtain a
flood-control project or remain a military base, or when an
economic or other interest obtains a loop hole in the tax laws.
Client politics need not involve obvious economic groups. We
see client politics in action when teachers, organized as the
National Education Association, seek the creation of a cabinetlevel Department of Education; when organized Native
Americans work to make certain that the Bureau of Indian
Affairs is sensitive to their demands; when professors insist

that only other professors decide on what research projects the

National Science Foundation will spend its money; and when
civil rights groups dominate the work of the Office for Civil
Rights.
Visibility
Client politics is low-visibility politics: neither
the public at large nor (usually) the mass media have much
interest in or knowledge about the policies involved. That can
change, however. The regulations restricting the importation of
foreign oil so that some oil companies are benefited became
controversial because of the steep rise in oil prices in the early
1970s. The costs that consumers had to bear suddenly became
so visual and so high that no client group in the oil industry
could any longer hope that its benefits would go unnoticed.
Similarly, for decades technological advances steadily reduced
the cost of electricity, so the public was indifferent to the fact
that state utility commissions charged with regulating the price
of electricity usually did so in a perfunctory manner. When
electricity prices began rising steeply in the 1970s, however,
consumers complained, and many state utility commissions
began to take a tough line against utilities. Subsidies to
tobacco farmers were largely ignored until many people
became concerned about the harmful effects of cigarette
smoking on health.
Noneconomic groups can also see their favored-client
position deteriorate as a result of external forces. Extremist
political groups may easily take advantage the protection that
they enjoy from the First Amendment during tranquil times;
when a national crisis, such as war, occurs, the public may
suddenly decide that the costs of free speech have become to
great and demand restrictions.
Political Parties
Political parties ordinarily play only a
small role in client politics, for an obvious reason: when a
group makes an unopposed request, it would be foolhardy for

most legislators to suppose that they had anything to gain by

voting against it. Such measures typically pass with the support
of lopsided majorities in both parties. Sometimes that outcome
is facilitated by grouping a number of client proposals in one
package (a pork barrel) so that there is something for
everyone.
The political problem of a client group is ordinarily not
that of winning a majority on the final vote but of getting its
proposal brought up for a vote at all. Thousands of groups want
things from the government; the limits of time and of
congressional-committee interest reduce the number that will
succeed. Finding a strategically placed congressional sponsor is
essential. Because of the importance of having a sponsor and
the ease of avoiding publicity, many of the cases of political
corruption occur in the arena of client politics. Some members
of Congress think that they can charge for their services and
get away with it. This is not to say that most or even many
client-serving policies are the result of improper influence, but
only that the conditions here are more conducive to such
influence than they are in majoritarian politics.
Identifying the Clients Occasionally a client-serving policy
will be devised and proposed not by the client group itself but
by a self-appointed (or vicarious) representative. Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964 was intended to benefit the urban
poor, especially in minority neighborhoods, but it was not
carried through Congress by an organization representing the
urban poor. This was done by professionals bureaucrats and
political executives who thought that it was time to act on
behalf of the poor. Because they framed their proposals in
harmony with the existing consensus on how needy people
should be helped (chiefly with services rather than with
money), and because their proposals seemed then to impose not
costs on any other distinct segment of society, the easy passage

of Economic Opportunity Act revealed a kind client politics.

Conflict later erupted, however, when mayors discovered that
the Community Action Programs were a challenge to the
institutional authority of city hall. From then on the matter
became one of interest group politics.
Serving the Clients Client-serving programs have led to the
creation of client-serving government agencies. Some scholars
speak of how agencies like the Civil Aeronautics Board and the
capital Federal Communications Commission have been
captured by groups they are supposed to regulate, but this is
misreading of history. These agencies and others like them
were formed specially to serve the interest of domestic aviation
and radio broadcasting, just as the Veterans Administration
(later remained the Department of Veterans Affairs) was
created to serve the interests of veterans. At the time that these
laws were passed, and for many years thereafter, people saw
nothing wrong with such promotional ventures.
Important political changes have substantially reduced the
freedom of action of clients-serving agencies. The greater ease
with which one can form and sustain groups purporting to
represent mass poor diffuse interests an the larger range of
questions in which federal courts now intervene have made
low-visibility client politics less common than in the past. Even
tobacco farmers have had to accept lesser subsidies because of
popular concerns over smoking. Consumer advocate groups,
environmental protections groups, and organizations
representing liberal conservative causes use a sophisticated
fund-raising methods and take advantage of the easier access
that plaintiffs have to courts (owing to changed rules on
standing and provisions for fee shifting). By these methods
such groups have reduced the extent to which diffuse interests
go unrepresented in the arena of client politics but they have

created new problems because that representation is often

inaccurate.
Moreover, the proliferation of regulatory agencies in the
government has resulted in the creation of offsetting pressure
against some client interests. Client politics comes about
because the majority of the people who must bear the costs (at
a small per-person amount) of a client groups benefits have no
incentive to organize to contest those benefits. The
government, because it can sustain organizations through
taxation rather than having to depend on volunteer
contributions, can create agencies to contest client claims. Thus
the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has challenged
some of the practices of client-serving regulatory agencies, as
when it criticized airline regulations for failing to promote
competition.
-Entrepreneurial Politics
Though opposition to client politics may eventually be
institutionalized in the form of a new government agency,
initially such opposition requires some form of entrepreneurial
politics. An indifferent public can only be mobilized through
skilled leadership that attracts substantial media attention. If
real or imaginary threats to public well-being are pointed out,
a congressional majority can be led to favor politics that will
impose substantial costs on even a well-organized minority.
This happened when congressionaland ultimately popular
were led to support policies that set tough standards on air and
water pollution or tighten the regulations on patent medicines
and prescription drugs. It also happened when the public was
aroused against socialists, anarchist, communists and other
radical political groups and against high taxes.
Entrepreneurs can be found in the federal government such
as Dr. Harvey Wiley, the government chemist who dramatized
the need for regulation of patent medicines, and Senator Estes

Kefauver, who won headlines with his investigations of, first,

organized crime, and later, the pharmaceutical industry. There
was also Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and Senator
Joseph McArthur, who in different eras stimulated national
passions directed at supposed subversives. Senator Bill Bradley
and Representative Jack Kemp aroused interest in tax reform.
And entrepreneurs can be found outside the federal
government: Ralph Nader criticized various business practices,
Upton Sinclair wrote about the conditions in meat-packing, and
Howard Jarvis lead a grass roots attack on high property taxes
in California.
Compelling Symbols
Policy entrepreneurs must achieve
by emotional pleas what appeals to narrow self-interest cannot.
Thus the rational for a new policy must be presented in
dramatic terms and evoke powerful symbols in the publics
mindclean air, pure water, Americanism, sinister
plots, tax cheats, confiscatory taxes, and so on.
Legislative and administrative action based on such appeals is
often cast in equally bold terms, with strict standards, stern
penalties and short deadlines. Since the success of such
proposals depends on arousing or taking advantage of the
popular mood, the kinds of policies that can be adopted depend
on the kinds of symbols to which people will respond. These
symbols change from one generation to the next.
At one time atheists and communists seemed especially
threatening forces; at another time people were largely
indifferent to such groups. In an earlier era citizens might have
accepted high levels of atmospheric pollution; in the modern
era even low levels are a cause for popular concern. Some
people may be indifferent to the plight of coal miners, who
suffer injury and death to satisfy our need for coal as an energy
source, but be deeply upset even by the chance of an accident
at a nuclear power plant

Sometimes no compelling symbol can be found.

Advocates of strict gun control for example, have found it
difficult to mobilize an intense popular majority. This fact is
sometimes explained by the power of the National Rifle
Association. No doubt that group is influential, but so also have
been the automobile industry, local pharmacists, and the
American Medical Association. Nevertheless, each of these
other groups has lost decidedly on important issues because
each was unable to defeat powerful symbolic appeals.
Promotion by the Media
The mass media are of great
importance in entrepreneurial politics, especially key reporters
and editors who decide to give serious attention to the
proponent of a policy. Often a tactic alliance exists between a
policy entrepreneur, who supplies facts and arguments, and a
reporter, who produces vivid feature stories. These stories often
stimulate routine coverage of the issue by the press generally.
Though political parties will play some role in thisone party
is usually more sympathetic to the change than the otherthat
role is less significant than when majoritarian politics are
involved. To the extent that the symbols are powerful,
members of both parties feel compelled to pay them lip service
Capture of the Agencies
The
government
agencies
created as a result of entrepreneurial politics are often
vulnerable to capture by the interest group adversely affect
by the policy. Since the policy adopted imposes significant
costs on an organized group, that group has a strong incentive
to weaken the administration of that policy. The
pharmaceutical industry, for example, was from time to time
able to weaken the enforcement of the food and drug laws by
the Food and Drug Administration. In recognition of this
possibility advocates of such laws will sometimes create
agencies that will encourage interest group competition (the
regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency, for

instance, impose costs on industries that must abide by them

and create benefits for other industries that sell the equipment
necessary to comply with the regulations).
The Courts
The courts play an important role in
entrepreneurial politics. All affected parties, whether they be
business firms or political movements, will seek court
assistance in defending or resisting the new policy. Usually the
courts have deferred to the popular mood, at least initially, and
thus upheld new environmental regulations or new restrictions
on free speech. In time, however, an especially as popular
passions abate, the courts tend to evolve balancing tests to
access the fairness of the regulations following from the new
policy.
Competing Theories of Political Power
In Chapter 1 we briefly sketched several competing theories of
the distribution of political power in modern society. Each of
these theoriesthe Marxist, the pluralists, the bureaucratic, the
elitistis an attempt to characterize the political system as a
whole. From the evidence summarized earlier in this chapter,
the reader may already have summarized is the casethat no
single description of the entire political system seems adequate,
as different policies tend to arise out of somewhat different
political processes.
Of course, there is one description of the entire system that
is roughly accurate: ours is a representative democracy with a
high degree of personal freedom in the area of speech and
opinion. But though that says a great deal, it does not say
everything; in particular it does not say much about the very
different forms that representative democracy may take in
particular policy areas. This point will become clearer if we
review the more familiar theories of politics in light of what we
have learned about policy-making. We should bear in mind that
even a fairly extensive review of policies will of necessity omit

much that is important and that policies, perceptions of

policies, and the political system itself are constantly changing.
-Marxist Theory
Orthodox Marxist theory argues that the economic
structureand in particular the pattern of ownership of the
means of productionshapes politics and political outcomes.
The aspects of American policy-making most frequently cited
in support of this view are foreign policy, defense policy, and
economic regulation. With regard to foreign and defense
policies we have seen that political considerationspublic
opinion, perceptions of international military and diplomatic
necessities, and the worldview of government elitesand not
corporate ones are the decisive factors. Political considerations
account for at least the major diplomatic and military initiatives
of this country and explain the overall level of defense
spending. Economic regulations can be of very different kinds
depending on whether they are the product of interest group
conflicts (the National Labor Relations Act), entrepreneurial
skills (much environmental legislation), or client politics (an
agency such as the Maritime Administration).
A Marxistor more accurately, and economic
deterministtheory of politics may be applicable in cases
where an economic client obtains a governmental advantage.
An economic determinist can point to such client politics as
maritime and dairy subsidies; price supports for large farmers;
import quotas for sugar, beef, steel, and other products; and
favorable tax treatment for various economic groups. But even
with respect to client politics, economic determinism gives an
incomplete explanation, because a large and growing number
of instances of client politics reflects the demands of
noneconomic organizations. The most notable instances are
those of ethnic, racial, and womens groups. The special status
of such groups enjoy the Office for Civil Rights, the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission, the Civil Rights

Commission, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice
Department is not the result of their economic power, nor are
the benefits that they seek exclusively economic.
Moreover, even client politics takes place within the
boundaries of public and elite opinion. One can easily explain
in economic terms how the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB)
was created, since much of the work of that agency was
directly beneficial to and protective of the major airline
companies. It is harder to explain why the CAB was abolished
and how the protected status of airlines was removed over their
intense opposition or how bills to increase competition among
bankers, truckers, and security brokers became law or why the
auto industry was unable to prevent the passage of the Clean
Air Act.
A Marxist might rejoin that the principle influence of
economic, and especially corporate, power is not in the details
of legislation but in the control of the agenda of politics, the
shaping of the major thrust of policy (especially economic
policy), and the distribution of political resources among
potential participants in politics. There have been periods in
American history where such influences have been important.
In an era of limited government, especially before the
1930s, many problems and practices never became political
issues at all. Efforts to put them on the political agenda were
met with the argument, often decisive, that it was wrong or
illegitimate for the government to play any part in such matters
as social welfare, income distribution, labor disputes, or the
conditions of the workplace.
Since the 1930s, and in particular since the 1960s, it is
hard to think of any problem, real or imagined, that has not
found its way onto the political agenda. The legitimacy

barrier has long since collapsed; politics today is not just

about a few obvious public things but about early everything.
Similarly, at one time access to political resources
money and voteswas sharply limited. Political funds came
predominantly from the wealthy, and voting was heavily
influenced by party bosses and machines. Newcomers to
politics often experienced difficulty in obtaining either funding
or votes. But in the modern era a remarkable transformation
has occurred. There was a wholesale redistribution of political
resources, without a prior redistribution of income:
Nominees for office were selected by primary elections
rather than by party organizations.
The partisan and elite media were in part replaced by
the mass media.
Racial and sexual barriers to voting were torn down.
Issue organizations became easier to form and to
maintain as a result of the role of private foundations,
direct-mail fund-raising techniques, government grants
and contracts, and fee shifting in court suits.
Moreover, the making of economic policy was profoundly
altered when the elite opinion accepted the propriety of budget
deficits and of public responsibility for the maintenance of a
high-employment economy. Once the earlier constraints had
been removedthe belief that balanced budgets were essential
and that balanced budgets were essential and that economic
growth should be maintained by governmental aids to
investment but not to consumptionpublic officials were free
to pursue economic policies with an eye chiefly to their impact
on majority opinion.
In sum, though many examples of policy-making are
dominated by economic advantage, no simple theory of
economic determinism offers an accurate, comprehensive view
of American politics.

-Elitist Theory
In one sense almost all politics is elitist, in that almost all
government decisions are made by the few rather than the
many. But elitist theory says more than this: it asserts that it is
always the same elite that make policies, whatever the nature
of the issue; that this elite acts in concert or at least has a
common social, economic, or occupational background; and
that the elite is only weakly influenced, if at all, by popular
opinion.
One could describe client politics as a partial conformation
of elite theory. Obviously, when a few individualsbusiness
people, union leader, professors, state welfare directors
acquire substantial influence over a broad policy area from
which they benefit, they are an elite. But these examples
illustrate the inherent ambiguity in elite theory. It makes all the
difference whether a small group has power because it
constitutes the direct beneficiary of some policy (as with dairy
farmers, merchant seamen, or university research laboratories
or because it has certain general characteristics (wealth,
prestige, social standing) that enable it to influence even
policies that do not affect its interests. Elite theory subscribes
to the latter view of elitesthat they are powerful simply
because of their personal attributes.
Client politics should not be regarded as a confirmation of
elite theory but as an illustration of how the distribution of the
costs and benefits of a proposed public policy differentially
influences the abilities of the affected groups to shape that
policy. The power of an activist federal judiciary is a better
illustration of elite theorynot because judges are well paid or
prestigious but because they are drawn from a profession (law)
that provides them with cues and rewards that influence their
decisions. Judges make decisions without being closely
constrained by interest groups or voters but with considerable

attention to the world of legal scholarship.

Foreign policy making is an especially interesting case of
elite influence, because, unlike in client politics, the power of
the elite does not depend on its ability to win votes, mobilize
interest groups, raise campaign funds, or represent ethnic or
racial blocs. The influence of this elite depends on its
members being part of a group that shares certain ideas and
that has acquired experience in managing or writing about
foreign affairs. At one time the foreign policy elite was also
distinctive for its common social backgroundwell-to-do,
white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants who had attended Ivy League
colleges. That is much less the case today. At present the
members of the foreign policy elite are distinctive more for
their ideas than for their origins. These ideas are formed by
experience, academic training, and personal ideology and tend
to change from one generation to the next.
The most popular version of elite theory today hold that
career politicians in Congress make decisions without any
serious regard for social reality or public opinion. But if that is
true how did these people get so much power? The answer, of
course, is that we elected them to Congress, usually by big
margins. Once when people complained of elites, they had in
mind business or labor leaders whom no one had elected.
Today we complain of elites that the people had chosen.
-Bureaucratic Theory
The bureaucratization of almost all aspects of life, public
and private, is one of the most dominate facts of modern
society. Some have argued that the number, size, and influence
of government bureaucracies have become so great that elected
officials and their key advisers are almost powerless to affect
policy: whatever top officials propose, the bureaucracy can
subvert. Criticisms of the bureaucratic state have evoked a rich
verbal imagery: leading the bureaucracy is like pushing a wet

string or changing the bureaucracy is like moving a

cemetery.
But it is as easy to over estimate as to under estimate
bureaucratic power. Bureaucracythat is, government by large
organizations made up of appointed career officialsis most
influential when the law confers on such officials wide
discretion (or freedom to choose among alternative courses of
action). Such broad discretion exists with respect to the
procurement of weapons, the enforcement of civil rights laws,
the making of foreign policy, and the regulation of business.
Some of this discretionary authority is inevitable. There is
not way, for example, that Congress could write in to law the
precise specifications of the fighter planes that the air force
should buy or set the exact rates that railroads should charge
for various classes of freight. But some discretion is the result
of Congresss being willing to make choices that could, in fact,
be made. Congress could, for example, clarify the ambiguous
laws now governing methods for allocating TV licenses.
Indeed, it has tried to do this but found that congressional
opinion is so divided that the choice must be left, willy-nilly, to
judicial and administrative officials.
Bureaucrats have the least power when their task is
specified by statue and in exact language. This is the case in
the area of the Social Security laws that tell the administrator
exactly how much money is to be sent to what classes of
people how often. Bureaucratic discretion is similarly narrow
when it comes to providing benefits to veterans and farmers.
This is not to say that agencies working in these areas do not
have bureaucratic problems, such as red tape or delays. They
do, as do all large organizations, private or public. But those
are very different problems from the kinds that are created by
the existence of bureaucratic discretion.
Congress had of late taken not of this and tried to reduce

bureaucratic discretion in some areas. Clean air and clean water

laws specify rather exact standards for pollution control; the
Endangered Species Act gave nearly absolute protection to
such endangered creatures as spotted owls (until it was revised
in 1978); drug laws require the banning of certain foodstuffs
and chemicals if they have any tendency to produce cancer.
But if exact standards solve certain problems, they create
others, such as the problem of keeping down the social cost of
applying such strict standards.
There is at least one other way, besides being given
discretionary authority, in which the bureaucracy has become
more powerful. Increasingly the bureaucracy has become a
source of the agenda of politics. The Economic Opportunity
Act of 1964, and the Medicare Act of 1965, proposals for a
new weapons systems, and many other important measures
came not from private demands made on government but from
governments generating demands on itself. Any president who
tries to formulate a legislative program quickly discovers that
he is heavily dependent of the bureaucracy for most of his
ideas, just as any president who tries to reorganize the
executive soon learns that his chief opponents are his nominal
subordinates, the bureau chiefs.
In short, the power of a bureaucracy may not depend so
much on the kinds of politics (interest group, client, or
whatever) that led to its creation as on the clarity and
consistency of the congressional laws governing it and on the
political constraints that make it concerned with following
rules than serving people.
-Pluralist Theory
The view that policies are shaped by conflict and
bargaining among organizations representing affected groups is
obviously an accurate description if what we have called
interest group politics. We have also seen the limits of the

pluralist model: it overestimates the extent to which interest

groups will form and be active. In client politics the large
number of people who bear the widely distributed costs of a
client-serving program have no incentive to organize and must
rely instead on the vicarious (and perhaps inaccurate)
representation supplied by public-interest lobbies. In
majoritarian policies, important decisions can be made as the
result of direct presidential leadership of, and congressional
response to, majority views, with interest groups playing only a
marginal role.
With the rise of entrepreneurial politics and the collapse of
some of the barriers to political participation, the pluralist
theory has in a sense become more applicable to American
government. Ironically, during the period (generally the 1950s)
in which the theory was most influential, it was least accurate.
Many interests (consumers, for example) were not represented
in politics at all, and some groups in society (blacks, for
example) were encountering barriers to political action. Today
a greater variety of interests and of people are represented one
way or another in Washington than ever before. Indeed, some
see in this and atomization of politics that has sharply
reduced the power of the government to do anything at all.
But if the pluralist theory has become more descriptive of
politics today, it still remains an incomplete one, not only
because is does not take into account client or majoritarian
politics but also because it offers not clear explanation of the
special nature of entrepreneurial politics. the policy
entrepreneur as folk hero is not a new phenomenon, but it has
become a common place one. This could not have happened
without the rise of national mass media and a shift in beliefs
among the upper middle class (or at least that part of it called
the new class in Chapter 5) in a direction that is supportive of
certain kinds of entrepreneurship. Nor does pluralism take fully

into account the extraordinary role played by the judiciary, the

institution that can only with difficulty be described as a
group with interests. Rather, the courts are a
constitutionally based source of authority, the exercise of
which depends crucially on the ideas and beliefs of its
individual members.
SUMMARY
There is no single answer to the question Who governs?
Everything depends of what policy is being proposed and on
the opportunities that different proponents and opponents have
to mobilize on there own behalf different parts of the
fragmented institutions and processes. A crude classification
can be made by some of the ways in which power is distributed
by looking at the perceived costs and benefits of a policy there
are four types of policies: majoritarian, interest group, client,
and entrepreneurial.
Using these four types, we can evaluate the claims made
by advocates of the Marxist, elitist, bureaucratic, and pluralist
theories of politics. No single theory is generally true, though
some theories are correct in some cases. Any classification
scheme and any evaluation of political theories must constantly
be revised to account for changes in social reality, public
perceptions of that reality, and ideas that people have about the
proper purposes.