What Is It About Government That Americans Dislike? Edited by John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 296p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper

Extract

This edited volume begins with the premise that the American public's dislike of government is a problem; there is too much negative sentiment about government. The editors pose a number of questions, among them how to fashion reforms in order to create a “style of government that would make the people happy” (p. 1). Consistent with their important new work on “stealth democracy,” John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse argue that this unhappiness is not the result of policy outcomes at odds with citizen preferences, but is instead rooted in the rancorous public process of political sausage making. They take issue with the notion that more voice through deliberation should lead to greater approval of government, and suggest instead that people would feel a lot better if democratic processes minimized the influence of special interests and maximized representation of a “public interest, [that] by its very nature, is concerned with the welfare of all salt-of-the-earth Americans” (p. 249).