Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress

Extract

Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress. By Diana Evans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 280p. $60.00 cloth, $21.99 paper.

A variety of recent studies of American politics and public policy focuses on the role of entrepreneurs in the agenda-setting process. While the focus is quite often on the role of entrepreneurs as architects of policy change, or as sources of policy disequilibrium (Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 1993; Mark Schneider, Paul Teske and Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government, 1995; Adam D. Sheingate, “Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development,” Studies in American Political Development 17 [Fall 2003]: 185–203), entrepreneurs may also work to maintain policy equilibria through the maintenance of majority coalitions. (Although this might be the difference between entrepreneurial and leadership activity, the former is interested in assembling a coalition to challenge the policy status quo, while the latter focuses on coalition maintenance in support of the status quo.) Whether they are engaged in “creative acts of destruction” (Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942) or are attempting to maintain a policy equilibrium, a major factor shaping the decision to pursue entrepreneurial activity, as well as the chances of success of such efforts, is the perceived costs associated with assembling a winning coalition. Successful entrepreneurs are those who are able to overcome the collective-action problem associated with coalition maintenance.