The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State: Institutions and Interest Group Power in the United States, France, and Japan By Adam D. Sheingate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. 279p. $45.00.

Extract

This is a helpful addition to the growing body of historical institutionalist literature that demonstrates the influence of macro- and sectoral-level institutions on policymaking. The central arguments, examined here with regard to agricultural policy, are two. First, institutional relationships among state and nonstate actors may facilitate one policy objective but impede other policy goals. Neither novel nor inconsistent with the literature, this proposition is advanced through elaboration of how various interrelationships between political parties and interest groups shape governments' policy capabilities. Second, Sheingate argues that the American institutional framework of dispersed authority and pluralism does not necessarily render governments incapable or subject to interest group capture. In advancing this proposition, he seeks to put paid to popular depictions of American agrarian politics as constituting iron triangles and all-powerful farm groups.