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Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: a Comparative Analysis: Part III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Anthony King
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III THE PATTERN EXPLAINEDIn part I of this paper we described the gross pattern of public policy in our five countries. In part II we looked at how the pattern developed in each of the countries. We noticed that the countries have pursued policies that diverge widely, at least with respect to the size of the direct operating role of the State in the provision of public services. We also noticed that the United States differs from the four other countries far more than they do from each other. These findings will not have come as a great surprise to anybody, although some readers may have been surprised – in view of the common assumption that all major western countries are ‘welfare states’ – to discover just how much the countries differ and what different histories they have had.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1973 , pp. 409 - 423
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 See esp. Dye, Thomas R., Politics, Economics and the Public: Policy Outcomes in the American States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966)Google Scholar, and Sharkansky, Ira, Spending in the American States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968)Google Scholar. Examples of similar cross-national research include Pryor, Frederic L., Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968)Google Scholar; Aaron, Henry, ‘Social Security: International Comparisons’ in Eckstein, Otto, ed., Studies in the Economics of Income Maintenance (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967). 13–48Google Scholar; Cutright, Phillips, ‘Political Structure, Economic Development, and National Social Security Programs’, American Journal of Sociology, LXX (1965), 537–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paukert, Felix, ‘Social Security and Income Redistribution: A Comparative Study’, International Labour Review, XCVIII, (1968), 425–50Google Scholar; and Taira, Koji and Kilby, Peter, ‘Differences in Social Security Development in Selected Countries’, International Social Security Review, XXII (1969), 139–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Groth, Alexander J., Comparative Politics: A Distributive Approach (New York: Macmillan, 1971).Google Scholar

2 It could be claimed that the differences in our five countries’ policies should be explained in terms of the countries’ different ‘needs’. Quite apart from the fact that an explanation in terms of needs would be almost impossible to operationalize, such an explanation, if someone produced one, would almost certainly turn out to be false. It is hard to conceive of any sense in which it would be accurate to say that Germany ‘needed’ health insurance in the 1880s whereas the United States did not need it until the 1960s, or that France ‘needed’ a publicly-owned railway system in the 1930s whereas the US still does not need one in the 1970s.

3 Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).Google Scholar For a more recent treatment see Domhoff, G. William, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar For a discussion of Western countries generally, though with special emphasis on Britain, see Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969)Google Scholar; Miliband's footnotes are a good guide to the Marxist and Millsian literature.

4 We are assuming here that mass demands are in some sense ‘given’: that politicians and governments do not create demands, only react to them. But of course there is every reason to think that public demands and expectations are as much a consequence as a cause of governmental activity: that politicians frequently respond to demands that they themselves have created; see Edelman, Murray, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence (Chicago: Markham, 1971).Google Scholar This point does not contradict, but rather reinforces, the argument developed below.

5 See, e.g., Mccallum, R. B. and Readman, Alison, The British General Election of 1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), passim,Google Scholar and Lloyd, T. O., Empire to Welfare State: English History 1906–1967 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), Chap. 10.Google Scholar But cf. Cantril, Hadley, ed., Public Opinion 1935–1946 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 272, 343, 476, 677–8, 696 and 728.Google Scholar

6 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 177–8.Google Scholar

7 Gendarme, René, quoted in Baum, Warren C., The French Economy and the State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), p. 174.Google Scholar

8 Abundant but scattered. It is an interesting comment on the research interests of political scientists that no one since Cantril (see fn. 5) has bothered to compile cross-nationally the results of surveys of public attitudes towards domestic policies.

9 Free, Lloyd A. and Cantril, Hadley, The Political Beliefs of Americans (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), p. 13.Google Scholar

10 See e.g. the Survey Research Center (Michigan) data reported at various points in Key, V. O. Jr,, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961).Google Scholar A fascinating compilation, so far largely overlooked by political scientists, is Schiltz, Michael E., Public Attitudes Toward Social Security 1935–1965 (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1970).Google Scholar

11 See also the comments in Marmor, Theodore R., The Politics of Medicare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 115.Google Scholar

12 For an example of different factors being used to explain the same phenomenon, without the writers’ apparently realizing that the factors are different, see Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security 1900–1935 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. vii (Foreword by Oscar Handlin), 5–6, 66, 123.Google Scholar

13 See Beer, Samuel H., ‘Pressure Groups and Parties in Britain’, American Political Scien Review, L (1956), 1–23.Google Scholar

14 Compare Finer, S. E., Anonymous Empire: A Study of the Lobby in Great Britain, 2nd edn. (London: Pall Mall, 1966)Google Scholar, Chap. 2, with, e.g., Zeigler, Harmon, Interest Groups in American Society (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964).Google Scholar

15 See e.g. Beer, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Knopf, 1965), esp. pp. 329–30Google Scholar; Lieber, Robert J., British Politics and European Unity: Parties, Elites, and Pressure Groups (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Braunthal, Gerard, The Federation of German Industry in Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Safran, William, Veto-Group Politics: The Case of Health-Insurance Reform in West Germany (San Francisco: Chandler, 1967).Google Scholar

16 For a brief, recent summary of the French position see Avril, Pierre, Politics in France (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books), pp. 242–50.Google Scholar

17 See e.g. Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951), pp.33–4.Google Scholar

18 Note e.g. the contrast between the American and British experiences with health insurance cited in Part II of this paper: British Journal of Political Science, III (1973), pp. 308–9.Google Scholar See also Skidmore, Max J., Medicare and the American Rhetoric of Reconciliation (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1970).Google Scholar

19 A recent statement of the classic view – or at least of part of it – is Burns, James Macgregor, The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963)Google Scholar; see esp. Part III and Chap. 4. See also Lockard, Duane, The Perverted Priorities of American Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1971).Google Scholar

20 Of course the differences may not be so great as they appear on the surface: the absence of a strong system of legislative committees does not necessarily mean the absence of opportunities for delay and obstruction; the presence of disciplined parties does not necessarily mean that leaders can lead their followers anywhere.

21 Lubove, Struggle for Social Security, Chaps. 6–7; Marmor, , Politics of Medicare, p. 72.Google Scholar

22 Marmor, Politics of Medicare, Chap. 3.

23 The best summary account of the Supreme Court's attitude towards social legislation in the pre-1937 period is probably Kelly, Alfred H. and Harbison, Winifred A., The American Constitution: Its Origin and Development, 3rd edn. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), Chaps. 19–27.Google Scholar

24 On various aspects of American political beliefs see Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955)Google Scholar; Sutton, Francis X. et al. , The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arieli, Yehoshua, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Mcconnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1966)Google Scholar; Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1962)Google Scholar, esp. Part I; Shonfield, Andrew, Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Skidmore, Medicare, Chap. I. For studies which emphasize divisions within the United States see e.g. Young, James P., The Politics of Affluence: Ideology in the United States since World War II (Scranton, Pa.: Chandler, 1968)Google Scholar and Dolbeare, Kenneth M. and Dolbeare, Patricia, American Ideologies: The Competing Political Beliefs of the 1970s (Chicago: Markham, 1971)Google Scholar. Unfortunately none of these books, with the partial exception of Hartz, seeks to compare and contrast American beliefs and attitudes with those of other countries.

25 Shonfield, , Modern Capitalism, p. 330.Google Scholar

26 The rest of this paragraph, save for the last sentence, is a paraphrase of Shonfield, Modern Capitalism, p. 330.

27 Hugh, Lord Cecil quoted in Black, R. J., ed., The Conservative Tradition (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1950), p. 84.Google Scholar

28 Quoted as the epigraph to Public Enterprise in France, an undated document published by the French Embassy in London.

29 Welter, Rush, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 189, 241.Google Scholar

30 On relevant aspects of the history and purposes of American education see Butts, R. Freeman, A History of Education in American Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1953), esp. Chaps. 9–12Google Scholar; Havighurst, Robert J. and Neugarten, Bernice L., Society and Education, 2nd edn. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1962), esp. Chaps. 2, 9Google Scholar; Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University (New York: Knopf, 1962), esp. Chap. 22Google Scholar; Vesey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), passimGoogle Scholar; and Schwebel, Milton, Who Can be Educated? (New York: Grove Press, 1968), esp. Part I.Google Scholar Unfortunately, as in the case of the books on American political ideas (see fn. 24), almost none of these books compares American educational ideas with those of other countries. Schwebel, however, does have some things to say about educational equality in Britain, France, Germany and the Soviet Union; see Who Can be Educated?, Chap. 2. In the light of our emphasis on the central role of ideas about the State, it is interesting to note that the United States is the only country where the idea is taken seriously of providing citizens with educational vouchers which they could then ‘spend’ on education as they chose; State and non-State institutions would thereby be put on an equal footing. On the voucher proposal see Friedman, Milton, ‘The Role of Government in Education’ in Solo, Robert A., ed., Economics and the Public Interest (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955).Google Scholar

31 Heidenheimer, Arnold J., ‘The Politics of Public Education, Health and Welfare in the USA and Western Europe: How Growth and Reform Potentials Have Differed’, British Journal of Political Science, III (1973), pp. 325–6.Google Scholar

32 On the United States see fn. 24 above.

33 See e.g. Butler and Stokes, Political Change in Britain, Part II and Chap. 18, and Campbell, et al. , The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar, passim.