Self-Policing in Politics: The Political Economy of Reputational Controls on Politicians

Extract

Self-Policing in Politics: The Political Economy of Reputational Controls on Politicians. By Glenn R. Parker. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 192p. $35.00.

With his latest book, Glenn Parker continues to take us along on his personal odyssey exploring the motivations of political officials and their consequences for our institutions and the quality of representation found in the American political system. Following his work that assumes legislators seek to maximize discretion and that explores how they structure their institutions to achieve that goal (Institutional Change, Discretion, and the Making of the Modern Congress, 1992) and his analysis of Congress in a rent-seeking environment (Congress and the Rent-Seeking Society, 1996), Parker, in this work, explores his concern for constraining the behavior of members of Congress who are increasingly “seeking material gain” (p. 12).