COMPARATIVE CONCLUSIONS
Having explored the various institutional differences between the United States and the other thirty cases, we now come to a point of asking two questions. The first is, Exactly how different is the democracy in the United States from the others? The second is, How does this matter? The first question is answered by looking at the basic institutional configuration of the United States in terms of various component elements of its institutional framework. This issue is explored in the first section of this final chapter. The second question focuses on public policy and is addressed in the second section of the chapter, which looks not only at a specific case study but at a series of twelve specific comparisons between the United States and the other democratic states under examination.
COMPARING THE INSTITUTIONAL MIX
As was noted in the first chapter of this book, the mix of institutions found in the United States is nearly unique within the universe of democracies that exist around the world. Indeed, if we look closely enough, we can see that US democracy is, in fact, different from all the others in a comparative institutional sense. We have seen in each of the chapters that the United States has features, some small and some large, that are different from any number of other cases within our set. However, now is the time to bring the salient variations together and discuss how much difference they may make in terms of governance. This first section of the chapter looks at this question from two perspectives. The first focuses more on identifying the variations in the institutional recipe of the United States of America that gives it its own unique flavors. The second is more systematic and focuses on the idea of veto gates within the institutional structure of the United States and how that shapes the question of policy making and governance.
What’s in the US Blueprint?
What, then, is the institutional legacy of the political engineers of the Philadelphia Convention, and how after two-plus centuries does it compare to other constitutional orders? Two tables orient the discussion in this section. The first, table 10.1, details noteworthy characteristics of US governmental institutions, whether they are ones that the United States holds uniquely or ones that it shares with only a handful of other cases. The second, table 10.2, provides a comprehensive comparison of all thirty-one cases on several major variables related to the basics of governance. These tables simply summarize significant portions of the discussion laid out in this book. Some general comments about the institutional design that makes up the United States provide a good place to start. Then this section of the chapter discusses two specific factors that are unique to the United States and that warrant special attention: longevity and primary elections.
If we distill the most fundamental variables of governance as a means of narrowing the institutional configuration of the United States, we can start with presidentialism as a filter, which quickly takes us from thirty-one cases to only seven: the United States, Korea, and the Latin American cases: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico (which is not surprising, given that the postindependence model for the Latin American cases was the US Constitution). The filter of bicameralism eliminates Korea, while federalism removes Chile and Colombia from the mix. So, in terms of the basic ways that power is allocated, considering both executive-legislative relations and the relationship of national and subnational governments, the United States is in a small subset of states (four out of thirty-one).
Another area that the United States shares with only four other, albeit different, states is a common-law legal system—something it shares with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The significance of this is further narrowed when we note that neither New Zealand nor the United Kingdom has strong judicial review, leaving only three total cases in our study that have a common-law tradition and strong review over constitutional questions by the courts. So the United States fits into two different, very small subsets, and it is alone in each set, making the general institutional parameters in question (presidentialism and federalism plus a common-law tradition with judicial review) a unique combination found only in the United States.
Table 10.1. Basic rundown of US differences/similarities to other democracies
Table 10.2. Comparing thirty-one democracies on basic governance
Notes: Italics for bicameralism indicates medium legislative symmetry; bold italics indicates high legislative symmetry. Parties = effective number if legislative parties. Pres = presidential system, Parl = parliamentary, Semi = semipresidential. Switzerland is marked as Pres* because they have formal separation of powers with a head of government called “president,” but the arrangement is unique and defies simple classification.
Beyond the general institutional mix of the United States versus the other states, there are two other factors that deserve some thought: longevity (as it relates to design and long-term function, and really the basic sequence of institutional choices made) along with a specific institutional innovation that is truly unique to the United States: widespread usage of the party primary to nominate candidates.
In table 10.1 (and in previous chapters) we have noted that the United States is old relative to other states both in terms of its adoption of democracy (with all the caveats that accompany such a discussion—such as the evolution of voting rights) and in terms of its initiation of constitutionalism. In terms of our discussion of political engineering and constitution construction, longevity matters because going first in making institutional choices means a lack of practical information about variations and their impacts (at least from the point of view of the political engineer). It also means that the path chosen by a given institutional choice can have follow-up consequences. For example, as noted in chapter 2: a choice was made to have the executive chosen by a body outside of the legislature (even though all initial discussions had had the legislature directly choosing the executive). This choice set the United States on a specific developmental path that created a fully separate executive from the legislature. Had the framers stuck with their original plans, then the US system could have easily more resembled a parliamentary system, because not only would one institution be choosing the other, but such a decision would have required a legislative majority to work together to select the executive. So, not only would legislative-executive relations been different, party development in the legislature would likely have been different as well.
Consider: The way the US system has evolved, candidates mostly run their own campaigns (due to single-seat districts) and party is mostly important as a signaling device in those elections and then in terms of legislative majorities focused on passing bills. However, if the legislature selected the executive, then the candidates would campaign differently, since the issue for voters is different if a member of congress legislates and helps select the executive. Hence, the choices made in Philadelphia had long-term consequence for political development well beyond the specific design that was agreed upon. And again, going first meant that there was no way to truly predict how these institutions would actually function.
Two specific issues that illustrate the importance of sequencing in designing institutions in the US case were political parties and elections. First, as we noted in chapter 6, political parties and their role in representative democracy were misunderstood by the political thinkers of the day and therefore played no role in the design of the institutional structure of the United States. And, as noted in the earlier paragraphs, choices about executive-legislative relations had long-term implications for the significance of parties (for example, parties in a parliamentary system play a role that parties in presidential systems do not: they choose the executive). Further, there were no practical guides for electing officials aside from plurality elections at the time. As such, no consideration or discussion was afforded to the implications of electoral rules. This fact has long-term effects on issues like party development and representation.
Additionally, the framers of the US Constitution were starting largely in a vacuum with only a handful of guidelines from which to choose. They had to invent, for all practical purposes, both federalism and presidentialism out of thin air. As such, the actual functioning of these institutional structures took time to sort out (indeed, the fight over some related issues, such as the proper relationship between the states and the national government, persist to this day).
Going first and remaining under the same constitutional order for a long period of time also means a likely conservative bias in terms of governance (and here by “conservative” we mean maintenance of the status quo, or at least slow change, as opposed to adherence to a specific ideology or contemporary partisan affiliation). To paraphrase the first law of thermodynamics so as to adapt it to politics: A political system in motion tends to stay in motion (because the political actors who would have to make moves to change the system are in power because of the existing system). The longer a system operates under a given set of rules, the longer those rules are likely to remain in force. Again, once on the path, it is difficult to deviate from it, and the specifics of the path in question end up dictating where one ends up going.
Beyond broad systemic issues, one institutional feature that evolved in the United States and remains unique in its application is the primary election as the method of nominating candidates for office. While some political parties in some countries have used primaries to nominate some candidates for some offices, no party system in the world comes anywhere near to the usage of primaries found in the United States. Primaries have been systematically used since the early twentieth century and are currently used at all levels for any partisan political office.1
Why might this matter? There are several factors worth considering. One is that it leads to the candidate-centric and nonhierarchical parties we noted in chapter 6. Primaries mean that the ability of party leadership to shape a party in a particular direction in terms of philosophy or party choice is quite limited. Rather, the process is one of self-selection by candidates, who choose to adopt a party label and run in the primary, which is then validated or rejected by voters on primary day. Candidates are therefore far more free agents than in systems with more hierarchically structured parties. A second key factor is that the widespread usage of primaries leads to less incentive for groups to form third parties. Consider: If a group of political activists are unhappy with either of the two main parties, they have two options—try to form a third party or try to win nomination within an established party. As we noted in chapters 5 and 6, third parties have had abysmal success rates in US politics (even when we compare the United States to other systems with plurality in single-seat districts, such as Canada and the United Kingdom); however, since anyone, in theory, can run within the Democratic or Republican primaries, there is an incentive for insurgent movements to run candidates within one of the main party structures.
Veto Gates
A more systematic way to address the issue of an institutional recipe is to look at the number of veto gates and veto players that exist within a given institutional mix.2 As we noted in chapter 1 and elsewhere, various institutional actors have the powers to either allow the policy-making process to move forward or not; that is to say, institutions that act like a gate can either stay closed, meaning policy making is halted, or opened, to allow a proposed policy to flow to the next stage. Further, within a given institution, there are actors who either have the unified power to open the gate (as with a president or a single, hierarchically organized party) or there may be multiple actors who have to agree before the gate can be unlocked (as with two or more parties in a legislative coalition).
Any institution that can block the flow of policy can be regarded, therefore, as a veto gate. Legislatures, as we have noted, fulfill this function because if they choose not to act on a given policy, then that policy will not happen. So, as we have seen, for every chamber in a legislature that has power over the legislative process, there is an additional veto gate in the system. If we further add an executive with veto power, then we have added another gate to the process of policy making.
A key comparative question that needs to be asked is, How many veto gates are there in a given system? Each chamber of a legislature through which bills must pass is a veto gate. Hence, a unicameral legislature is a single gate, and a bicameral legislature with either medium or strong symmetrical legislative powers produces two veto gates. Executive actors who can veto legislation (that is, many presidents) are also veto gates. Following this logic, all laws in the United States have to pass through three veto gates: the House, the Senate, and the president. Further, as noted in chapter 7, internal fragmentation of parties within the chambers, or more specifically, the power of the minority in the Senate, means that the two chambers of Congress contain numerous veto players who may not be willing to work together to open the veto gates in question.
Table 10.3 classifies our thirty-one democracies in terms of the number of veto gates in each system, combining information from previous chapters, including the strength of bicameralism (table 7.1) and executive veto powers (table 8.9). We can see that the bicameral, presidential systems of the Western Hemisphere (the United States and our Latin American cases) are the only countries with three veto gates. The remaining twenty-five cases have a mix of either two (symmetrical bicameralism or one chamber plus an executive) or only one veto gate (unicameral or asymmetrical bicameral systems with no executive veto). The number of veto players will depend on the party system in each country and whether or not coalitions must be formed within the legislature to pass legislation and, if the system is parliamentary, to form and maintain the government.
Table 10.3. Veto gates in thirty-one democracies
Notes: Italics indicates federal system; bold indicates no judicial review of legislation.
The earlier discussion is focused on the question of policy making as opposed to policy implementation. The process of implementation may run into two further political actors that may be able to partially, or fully, veto a policy: subunits in federal systems and courts in countries with strong judicial review. As such, the table notes federal cases as well as indicating those cases that lack judicial review of legislation.
Federalism can play a very strong role in policy implementation. As Stepan (2004b: 331) notes, the Argentine and Brazilian state governments have fiscal policy (that is, budgetary) powers over implementing central government policy. Likewise, US states can (as noted in chapter 4 and reiterated later in our discussion of implementing health-care reform) dictate, to some degree, how funds are spent when implementing policy.
As such, the main dimensions in terms of determining veto gates concerning policy design are parliamentary or presidential (that is, is there a separately elected executive with a veto pen?), and unicameral or bicameral (is there a second chamber with equal, or close to equal, legislative powers to the first chamber?). Further factors that require attention and bear on implementation are: Is the system unitary or federal (and do the states have special influence over policy making)? and does the system have courts that have strong judicial review (that is, can they strike down legislation as unconstitutional)? The more veto gates and players in a system, the more complex policy making and governance become.
PUBLIC POLICY
If, as we have shown, the United States is different from other democracies in terms of the makeup and functionality of its institutions, it is fair to ask to what degree it matters for policy outputs. This section of the chapter examines this issue from two approaches. The first is to look at a case study of the process by which major policy is made. Specifically, we do so by examining, in the context of veto gates (as well as other institutional elements of the system) in regards to the passage and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). The second is to examine a set of twelve public policy areas to see to what degree the United States conforms to or deviates from the norms within our cases.
Case Study: The PPACA
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare,” provides an excellent case to illustrate the institutional parameters of public policy making in the United States, specifically in terms of the various veto points (gates and players) that exist in the process. This illustration is made outside of questions of the normative value of the legislation (which is, we would readily note, a matter of public controversy, as is often the case with major legislative actions). Regardless of one’s view on this legislation, it provides an excellent glimpse into how the institutional parameters of the constitutional system of the United States affect policy making in ways that make the United States very different from almost all the other cases under examination. We can see in this case study illustrations of veto gates in action, the idiosyncratic functioning of the US Senate, as well as the role of the courts and primaries.
Table 10.3 shows us that the United States has three veto gates, plus it has judicial review of legislation and is federal.
We can see all of this in action in the recent health-care-reform debate. Specifically we start with the House, Senate, and the president. In 2008 Barack Obama, a Democrat, was elected to the presidency along with large majorities (especially in terms of the recent US context) in both chambers of the legislature. The party mix in the House was 257 Democrats (59.1 percent) to 178 Republicans (40.9 percent). In the Senate the Democrats would eventually (albeit briefly) hold a 60–40 advantage (more on that later). One of President Obama’s campaign promises focused on health-care reform, which had been a long-standing Democratic policy goal.3 Hence, going into the 111th Congress (2009–2011), all three veto gates were poised to be open and allow the passage of some form of health-care reform. And eventually, the bill in question was passed in a 60–39–1 vote in the Senate on December 24, 2009, and then in the house by a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, and was signed by the president two days later. So, at that point in the timeline, we see that with all the veto gates unlocked and opened, that policy was made; then the question of implementation arose, which brought in the states and the courts.
Before a full discussion of the role of the states and the courts, let us first note that the passage of the bill was not as simple as the numbers reported in the previous paragraph may suggest. Without getting into specific policy debates about the contents of the bill, its passage in the veto gate of the Senate is worth further scrutiny. As noted in the summary in table 10.1 and as discussed in chapter 7, the US Senate operates under rules that make it an especially difficult veto gate to open, because of the filibuster rule (that is, the supermajority requirement). In simple terms, any coalition of 41 senators can stop the Senate from acting on most legislation by refusing to allow cloture (that is, the formal end of debate). Without 60 percent of the duly elected and sworn-in senators voting to end debate, a measure such as the PPACA cannot be brought to a vote. These numbers are significant because a 60-vote majority is difficult to achieve.
Earlier we noted that in the 111th Congress the Democratic Party had, in fact, achieved a 60–40 margin in the chamber. However, we also noted that this was a temporary situation. The distribution of seats of the Senate by party was a somewhat tricky matter during this period of time. As a result of the November 2008 elections, the seat distribution was 56 Democrats, 41 Republicans, 2 independents (who would caucus with the Democrats), and one seat not yet settled, for a working legislative total of 58–41 which gave the Democrats 58.6 percent of the duly elected and sworn-in members of the chamber. The remaining seat was from the state of Minnesota and would not be fully settled (in the favor of Democrat Al Franken) until July 7, 2009. To make matters more complicated, a number of senators at the beginning of the 111th Congress left to serve in the executive branch, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While each of these persons was replaced by Democratic appointees, it did create some initial upheaval in the composition of the chamber.
The equation became even more complicated when Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties from Republican to Democrat on April 30, 2009, which took the seat distribution from 58–41 to 59–40. At that point the Democratic caucuses controlled 59.6 percent of the 99 seats. The full 60-vote majority did not occur until the aforementioned seating of Senator Franken in July. Complexity was further increased when Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts died on August 25, 2009. He was replaced first by a Democratic appointee a month later. However, his eventual replacement by special election was a Republican (Senator Scott Brown), and so the Democrats lost their 60-vote status as of February 4, 2010.
To summarize, the Democrats controlled 60 votes in the Senate only from July 7, 2009, to August 25, 2009, and then from September 25, 2009, to February 4, 2010. In legislative terms, especially for major legislation, these were fairly small windows. For the purpose of the theoretical discussion, the main point is that the nature of the Senate as a veto gate changed several times during a roughly one-year period. With a 60-vote majority, the Democrats were in a position to forward legislation. With 41 votes in the hands of the opposition party, the Senate became a closed gate, as the unified Republican opposition was a veto player unwilling to negotiate with the Democratic majority to open the gate. Indeed, the form of the PPACA as it currently exists was passed by the House only because (apart from some budget reconciliation issues4) the Senate could no longer pass any changes to the bill without facing a filibuster. The House was faced with the choice of an up-or-down vote on the Senate version that passed during the window in which the 60-vote margin existed or no bill.5 This entire scenario illustrates why and how the rules of governing can matter greatly.
Of course, passage of a law is not the end of the story. The states come into play in two ways. First, a number of state governments objected to the bill and started to engage in the tactic of foot-dragging in terms of implementation. Some states, in fact, asserted that they would not implement aspects of the policy, specifically the expansion of Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) or the insurance exchanges (a policy mechanism intended to facilitate the selling of insurance to the uninsured). Since a significant amount of social policy is implemented at the state level, the federal government must rely on it to put the laws into practice. Second, and more significantly, a number of attorneys general at the state level moved to sue the federal government and challenge the constitutionality of the PPACA. One of the cases, for example, was Florida v. the Department of Health and Human Services, which was filed in federal district court, initiated by the government of the state of Florida, which was joined by twenty-six other states.6 In this case, the district court ruled that part of the law was, in fact, unconstitutional—a ruling that was upheld on appeal and eventually came to be heard before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the basics of the law in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), but it also affirmed the states’ ability to reject the expansion of Medicaid, if the states saw fit to do so (hence confirming that the states could be veto gates to some portions of implementation of the policy).
Here we get the introduction of the courts as potential veto gates in the process of implementation of policy, because the legal process has dictated that the Supreme Court of the United States exercise its powers of judicial review regarding the law. This also brings in the notion of the Constitution as the final measuring stick of laws and policies, with the high court being the arbiter of the matter. A final point: It is interesting to note that a large number of the primary challenges made by the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party were made in response to the PPACA. Opposition to the bill has been a key motivator for the Tea Party’s candidates.
In conclusion to this section, what this particular situation well illustrates is that the more veto gates involved in policy making, the more difficult it is to make the policy in the first place, as well as it is to implement it. It especially highlights the degree to which minorities in the Senate, acting as veto players, can substantially control the policy-making process in the United States in a way that is wholly unique when compared to other democracies.
US Public Policy in Comparative Perspective
Just as the main chapters of this book detailed a number of ways in which US institutional structures conformed or differed from those in the other thirty democracies in this study, we end the last major section of this final chapter by placing the United States in comparison to our democracies in twelve areas of public policy. Note that the goal here is not to provide a normative assessment, but to note where the United States differs (or not) in comparison to the other cases.
1. Tax policy. Given that all public policy requires funding, a foundation of all such policy is tax collection. The United States is unique to this study in that it has no general consumption tax at the national level, that is, no national sales tax or value added tax (VAT). Indeed, in this regard the United States is part of a very small number of countries on a global scale. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) notes that more than 150 countries globally use the VAT, which places the United States in a distinct global minority.7 The United States does have a handful of targeted consumption taxes, also known as excise taxes, on such items as gasoline and tobacco products. For example, the federal government of the United States collects 18.4 cents in taxes per gallon of gasoline purchased in the United States, and like most consumption taxes, the tax is included in the cost of the item, instead of being added to the bill at purchase, as is the case with general sales taxes at the state level. Typically, consumption taxes like the VAT are included in the purchase price. In the absence of a VAT or similar broad consumption tax, the US central government funds itself primarily through income and payroll taxes. At the state level, it is a mix of income, sales, and property taxes.
Table 10.4. Total tax collected as a percentage of GDP, twenty-nine democracies, 1990−2009
Note: Data missing for India and South Africa.
Sources: OECD Tax Database, available at http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3746,en_2649_34533_1942460_1_1_1_1,00.html, and Revenue Statistics in Latin America, available at http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3746,en_2649_37427_49402742_1_1_1_37427,00.html.
In terms of the share of the national economy collected in taxes, at all levels of government, 27.39 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) was collected in taxes on average between 1990 and 2009. While this is not the lowest amount of taxes collected within our cases, among long-standing developed economies only Japan collected less over the 1990–2009 period. The US average is well below the median of 34.50 percent.
2. Debt. Another key way that states fund policy is through the acquisition of debt. While no country can exist solely by borrowing (at least not for long), all countries do engage in a mix of borrowing and taxation as a means of funding public policies in a given fiscal year. The United States is not unusual in this regard, as table 10.5 illustrates. While the United States does have debt above the median for our thirty-one cases, it is by no means the most indebted when measured as a percentage of GDP.
One interesting side note on debt in terms of recent US politics: The United States is only one of two countries in the study (indeed, perhaps overall) that requires a specific vote by the legislature to authorize the treasury to borrow funds to cover legislatively budgeted obligations. The other case is Denmark, although the Danish legislature tends to set the ceiling so high that it is not an issue. Some other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom vote on debt limits, but they are made as part of budget votes, not as separate legislative actions.8
3. Health care. The United States spends more on health care by a variety of measures than does any of the other countries in our study, as table 10.6 shows. In terms of the percentage of the economy spent on health care, the United States leads the way with 16.2 percent of GDP. This figure includes both public and private expenditures. The table also notes per capita health-care spending as well as isolating public expenditures only (also on a per capita basis). In all cases, the United States is on top of our set of countries. To find examples of countries that spend more per capita in public monies on health care, we have to move outside our comparison set to Norway and Luxembourg. However, while those countries spend more in public funds, they still spend substantially less overall on a per capita basis when private funds are included. Specifically, Luxembourg spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on health care in 2009, $4,808 per capita overall, and $4,040 per capita in terms of public expenditures alone. Norway’s numbers were 9.7 percent, $5,352, and $4,501 respectively. This compares to the United States at 16.2 percent, $7,960, and $3,795.
Table 10.5. Public debt as a percentage of GDP in thirty-one democracies (2011 estimates)
Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html.
Table 10.6. Health care expenditures in thirty-one democracies
Note: Some data are missing.
Sources: CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2225rank.html), and OECD Heath Data (http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-key-tables-from-oecd_20758480).
Despite high levels of expenditure, however, the United States does not rank at the top of several key indicators, including life expectancy, infant mortality, and maternal mortality (as tables 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 demonstrate). Not only is the United States below the median in life expectancy and above the median in infant mortality rate and maternal mortality, it clusters with states that were classifiable as developing within the last two decades (or in some cases that still are): Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico are all in the second tier of the Human Development Index (that is, “High Human Development”), and India and South Africa are in the third tier (“Medium Human Development”). The United States and the other cases are all in the first tier (“Very High Human Development”). Refer back to table 1.1 for all the HDI numbers for our thirty-one cases.
One last health indicator included here is the obesity rate. Table 10.10 details these numbers for twenty-seven of our thirty-one democracies, which the United States leads.
As noted earlier in the case study discussion regarding the PPACA, health-care reform has been a contentious and long-term policy debate in the United States. On a comparative note, the United States has long been unique in the developed world as a case without systematic universal health care.
4. Criminal justice. In comparison to our other cases, the United States has an especially punitive criminal-justice system. Here we provide three metrics: population in prison, presence and application of the death penalty, and life imprisonment for minors.
Table 10.7. Life expectancy at birth for thirty-one democracies (2011 estimates)
Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html.
Table 10.8. Infant mortality rates for thirty-one democracies (2011 estimates)
Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html.
Table 10.9. Maternal mortality rate for thirty-one democracies (deaths per 100,000 linked to pregnancy)
Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html.
Table 10.10. Percentage of population classified as obese (based on Body Mass Index) in twenty-seven democracies
Note: Data not available for Argentina, India, the Netherlands, and South Africa.
Definitions: “Obesity is defined as an adult having a Body Mass Index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30.0. BMI is calculated by taking a person’s weight in kilograms and dividing it by the person’s squared height in meters” (CIA World Factbook).
Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html.
Table 10.11 contains the imprisonment rates of the population in our thirty-one cases. These numbers include imprisonment regardless of level of government (that is, regardless of whether individuals were imprisoned at the national or subunit level). The United States is strikingly high in this, outpacing South Africa and Israel by a factor of 2.3. Clearly this is a function of policy and culture rather than other factors, as several countries that have marked violence problems (for example, Colombia and Mexico) have far lower incarceration rates, and, interestingly, India, which is large in both territory and population, is at the opposite end of the table. The number of citizens in prison is also of significance to the discussion of representative democracy, as those in prison are usually denied the right to vote. Further, as we noted in chapter 5, felons in the United States often remain unable to vote even after their incarceration ends.
As table 10.12 shows, the United States is in the distinct minority among our democracies in continuing to have the death penalty on the books. Indeed, the United States is one of only three countries in which the death penalty can be applied to ordinary crimes (that is, other than treason), and, indeed, remains in the distinct minority even if we included all countries that have not abolished the death penalty altogether. Additionally, as table 10.13 demonstrates, the United States is far more likely to use this means of punishment than the other five countries that retain a death penalty mechanism. In sum: the United States is both more likely to issue the death penalty as well as more likely to carry it out. This comports with the imprisonment numbers. For whatever reason, the United States is generally more punitive than the general democratic community.
Another area in which the United States is set apart is the sentencing of minors to life sentences. As Liptak notes, “The United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison” (Liptak 2007). An Amnesty International / Human Rights Watch study noted that at least 2,225 minors had been sentenced to life in US prisons, most since 1980 (Human Rights Watch 2005: 1–2).
5. Defense expenditures. In terms of military spending as a function of a percentage of the value of the overall economy (table 10.14), the United States spends the second most out of our set of democracies. Only Israel, which has specific and ongoing military threats, spends more. The average amount of GDP spent by the United States for a roughly two-decade period (almost all post–Cold War, but including the War on Terror era) was 3.9 percent of GDP, while Israel spent 9.0 percent. US spending is substantially higher than the median of 1.9 percent.
Table 10.11. Imprisonment rates (per 100,000 of the national population) in thirty-one democracies, 2009
Note: Data as gathered in January 2010. Exact dates per country range from mid-2008 to late 2009.
Source: Based on data collected by the International Centre for Prison Studies (www.prisonstudies.org).
Table 10.12. Status of death penalty in thirty-one democracies
Source: Amnesty International.
Table 10.13. Death sentences issued and executions carried out in seven democracies (2008–2010)
Notes: Executions in (parentheses). Number with “+” signs reported as “at least” the number given.
Source: Amnesty International.
Table 10.14. Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP for thirty-one democracies
Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute at http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex.
In terms of absolute dollars, the United States is the largest spender on its military in the world, and by a substantial margin. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted that the United States spent $711 billion in 2011 in comparison to second-place China, which spent an estimated $143 billion (a difference of a factor of just shy of 5). Sticking to raw dollars, the closest competitor in our set of democracies was the United Kingdom at $62.5 billion, or 11.4 times smaller than the United States.9
6. Gun rights. In terms of constitutional rights, only the constitutions of the United States and that of Mexico explicitly state the right of citizens to possess firearms, although the Mexican case builds in more provisos allowing regulation than does the US case. Otherwise, the remaining twenty-seven written constitutions are either silent on the subject or, such as the Chilean and Colombian, they note the right of the central government to regulate the private ownership of firearms. The Austrian constitution cedes the power to regulate firearms to the Länder (states). The most common constitutional reference in our set of countries to arms is the right of citizenry to peacefully assemble “without arms.”
The lack of a constitutional right does not preclude gun ownership in our cases, it just sets the general legal context. The United States is unique in recognizing individual gun ownership as a protected constitutional right (which was made clear in the 2010 Supreme Court case McDonald v. Chicago). However, as table 10.15 illustrates, private ownership of firearms exists across all thirty-one cases. The table also underscores the substantially higher level of gun ownership in the United States versus the other thirty cases. The civilian (that is, not militia-related) gun ownership rate in the United States (88.8 per 100 persons) is almost twice that of the second-highest case, Switzerland (45.7 per 100).
In terms of gun ownership policy, GunPolicy.org (a site that compiles data on gun laws globally and is run by Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney) classifies twenty-four of our cases as having firearm regulation regimes at “restrictive,” meaning a system in which citizens seeking to purchase a firearm must provide proactive evidence they have reasonable grounds for acquiring the weapon (for example, self-protection, sport, collecting, and so on). Only three countries, including the United States (along with Austria and Belgium), were classified as having “permissive” firearm regulation regimes, meaning systems in which certain classes of persons were prohibited from ownership but otherwise all citizens were eligible. Three additional cases (Israel, Italy, and Portugal) were not classified, although they would appear, based on other criteria, to fall in the “restrictive” category.
Table 10.15. Civilian-owned firearms per 100 people in thirty-one democracies (2007)
Source: Small Arms Survey, http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html.
Ultimately, the United States stands alone in terms of a clear constitutional right to own arms as well as in terms of the permissiveness of gun regulations. And, certainly, more guns are owned per hundred persons than in any of our other cases.
7. Employee protection. In chapter 6 we noted the low level of unionization in the United States. One area that can be linked to this in terms of public policy is the laws that provide employment protections. These policies focus on the question of the balance of rights between workers and employers and deal with issues such as how difficult it is to fire employees and the degree to which those employees have recourse to legal protection vis-à-vis the actions of employers. Other factors deal with contract rules and collective bargaining rights.
In her study of these types of laws, Venn notes that “the employment protection indicator is (on average) lower in countries with an English legal tradition (1.5) than in those with a French legal tradition (2.7). Countries based on the German (2.3) and Scandinavian systems (2.2) are in between” (Venn 2009: 17). Along those lines we can see on table 10.16 that the United States clusters with other Anglosphere countries—the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and the United Kingdom–influenced case of South Africa.
8. Near absolutism in free speech. All of the constitutions under study provide protection for speech. Indeed, freedom of speech is a fundamental democratic right, which must exist for democracy to exist. However, in the US context, the right comes nearer to an absolute one than in our other cases. Specifically we can identify differences on hate speech, slander, and campaigning / campaign finance rules.
Table 10.16. Employment protection index in twenty-nine democracies
Source: OECD. To find out more about the methodology used to calculate the OECD employment protection indicators, see www.oecd.org/employment/protection.
Hate speech has political significance, as it pertains to certain kinds of extremist political parties and their activities, especially in public. The interpretation of the First Amendment by the Supreme Court has been such that it allows groups like the Ku Klux Klan or the National Socialist Party of America to engage in public activities, even when the community has a high probability of being offended by said activity. This is not the case in all of our democracies. For example, as Schauer notes:
Germany, Israel, and France are among the nations that prohibit the sale and distribution of various Nazi items, including swastikas, Nazi flags, and, on occasion, images of Adolph Hitler and copies of Mein Kampf. Canada, Germany, and France, along with others, permit sanctions against those who would deny the existence of the Holocaust. France imposes fines with some frequency on public utterances espousing the racial or religious inferiority of various groups, or advocating the exclusion of people from France on the basis of their race, their religion, their ethnicity, or their national origin. The Netherlands outlaws public insults based on race, religion, or sexual preference. (2005: 708)
He further notes: “South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and all of the Scandinavian countries, among many others . . . mak[e] it a crime to engage in the incitement to racial, religious, or ethnic hatred or hostility” (708). All of those mentioned are permissible under the prevailing interpretations of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Not only is politically extreme speech more protected in the US case, defamatory speech is likewise more protected, especially in terms of application to public figures, including politicians. Another comparative study noted:
Under the rule of New York Times v. Sullivan and its subsequent extensions, laws imposing liability on those who defame government officials or other public figures are constitutionally permissible only when such speech is made with “actual malice”—that is, knowledge that the statement is false or reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. This rule has expressly been considered and rejected under both the Canadian and Australian Constitution as insufficiently protecting the conflicting values of reputation and dignity, a position mirrored in most other countries, including Germany. (Gardbaum 2008: 402–3)
Another key area worth considering, especially as it pertains to electoral politics, is that of campaign speech and its linkages to campaign finance. In regards to campaign speech, the US system is one that allows for very few restrictions on campaign advertising. For example, there are controls on paid advertisement and broadcasting in the United Kingdom that could never withstand court scrutiny in the United States. As Gardbaum notes: “The exceptional understanding of the right to free speech as permitting at most only very limited regulation of broadcasting companies means that the common ban elsewhere on paid political advertisements in favor of free, mandated airtime for electoral candidates would be unconstitutional in the United States” (2008: 403). Not only are controls over broadcast commercials not possible, but the general situation is such that campaign-finance controls are limited because they have been seen by the Supreme Court as First Amendment issues. Specifically, the Supreme Court of the United States recently expanded the application of political free-speech rights to group actors, including corporations in the Citizens United case in 2010. The case also made explicit a notion in American campaign-finance policy that money is speech in the sense that the main way by which political speech is made public is via the spending of money. This, therefore, produced a legal regime that made the curtailing of campaign spending difficult.
9. Citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution explicitly states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The original purpose of this clause was to find a comprehensive method for ensuring that all freed slaves were recognized as citizens in the post–Civil War period (as well as to explicitly overturn aspect of the infamous Dred Scott case that has declared that freed slaves were not citizens). Subsequent to its original purpose, this clause also has been recognized to grant citizenship to any person born in the United States, regardless of the citizenship status of the parents. As such, the United States has what is known as birthright citizenship, also referred to by the Latin term jus soli, which means “right of soil.” This is to be contrasted with citizenship policies that require that one inherit one’s citizenship from one’s parents, which is called jus sanguinis (“right of blood”).
Of our thirty-one cases, only the United States and six other cases have automatic birthright citizenship. These are Canada (since 1977) and the Latin American cases (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico). Indeed, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, pure birthright citizenship regardless of one’s parent’s status is a Western Hemispheric phenomenon.10
10. Environmental policy. The best indicator of how well countries do with regard to protecting the environment is the Environmental Performance Index, produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale University and Columbia University. It is a broad and comprehensive index that rates the performance of most of the countries in the world on twenty-five indicators in ten policy areas, including environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change (Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy 2010). A pilot project was published in 2006, and full reports were released in 2008 and 2010. Table 10.17 uses the average ratings for the latter two years received by our thirty-one countries. Countries are rated on a scale from 100, indicating the best performance, to 0, indicating the poorest performance, although in practice no country is rated even close to 0. The more economically developed countries tend to have the better environmental performance, but there are clear exceptions. For instance, Colombia and Chile are in the top half of the table with ratings above the median, and Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium are well below the median. The United States is also in the bottom half—ranked number twenty-third out of thirty-one countries.
11. Distribution of wealth. A policy dimension to consider that is focused less on a policy as much as on outcomes is the distribution of income within our cases and how the United States fits into the discussion. All of our cases include tax provisions, for example, that cause wealthier citizens to pay more in taxes both in relative and absolute terms. As such, all of these systems can be said to have some sort of redistributionist elements. However, redistribution for redistribution’s sake is likely not the goal, but policies such as public education have redistributionist elements. To wit: Property taxes collected in a US municipality to help pay for K–12 education will help poor children receive an education that can help them move out of poverty because of the enhanced employment prospects afforded to the education, even though their families paid proportionally fewer taxes into the system than did wealthier residents.
Table 10.17. Environmental performance in thirty-one democracies, 2008−2010
Source: Based on data in Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, 2010; http://epi.yale.edu.
The notion of redistribution as a general principle is not especially popular in many sectors of US society, although the question of wealth distribution became a more prominent political topic of discussion as a result of the financial crisis and recession of the late 2000s. In regard to public sentiment, a 2011 Gallup poll asked about policies to fix the economy, and only 13 percent of national adults chose, “Take steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans,” whereas 84 percent preferred, “Take steps to improve overall economic conditions and the jobs situation.”11 A separate 2011 poll on the more specific policy question, “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?” the result was 47 percent yes, 49 percent no, and 4 percent no opinion.12 The notion is, depending on how the question is asked, either unpopular or polarizing.
Of course, much of this relates, in a practical political fashion, to the note earlier on tax policy, insofar as noted in table 10.4, the United States is well below the median in taxes collected as a percentage of GDP. In terms of actually measuring distribution, table 10.18 details the Gini Index rankings for our thirty-one democracies on the issue of household income.
Table 10.18. Gini index for household income in thirty-one democracies
Source: Human Development Report 2009, http://hdr.undp.org/en/global-reports.
The Gini Index is a mathematical formula used to measure distribution of items and is a standard metric for measuring wealth/income distribution. The Gini Index runs on a theoretical scale from 0 to 100 with a measure of 0 meaning that everyone has an equal share of whatever is being distributed, and a measure of 100 meaning that one person has everything.13 Reality in any given distribution, especially in terms of income, is somewhere between 0 and 100. In table 10.18 we see that of our thirty-one democracies, Denmark has the most even distribution, with a Gini Index of 24.7, and Colombia is the most maldistributed, with a Gini Index of 58.5. The United States has an index of 40.8, which is significantly above the median of 34.3. Hence, in terms of actual distribution of incomes by household, the United States is one of the more unequal examples in our comparison set and, as with a number of other policy examples noted earlier, clusters with cases that were recently (or still) classified as developing.
This topic is linked to a broad belief in the United States of social/economic mobility as manifested in the “American Dream,” that is, that the United States has a purely meritocratic system wherein hard work will be rewarded with upper mobility in the social structure. Such a notion also assumes that existing distributions are the result of that meritocratic system. However, recent studies have noted that this is not the case, but rather that “in tests of intergenerational mobility, the higher the correlation between one’s generation’s family income and education and the next generation’s, the lower the mobility” (Stepan and Linz 2011: 852). In other words, in comparing the United States to other advanced industrial democracies, the macro-level finding is that one’s chances of upward mobility are predicated substantially on one’s family position than on one’s own hard work. Stepan and Linz go on: “In all of the studies, the United States emerges as having the lowest levels of intergenerational upward mobility, with the exception of the UK” (852). One study, by Corak, summarized the situation as follows in a statement that includes several of our other democracies: “The United States, the United Kingdom, and to a slightly lesser extent France, stand out as being the least mobile societies, with 40–50% of fathers’ earnings advantage being passed on to sons. At the other extreme are Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with about 15–20% of earnings advantage passed across generations, and in an intermediate position Germany and Sweden with about 30%” (2006: 11).
If the main predictor of how one will fare economically generation to generation is the status of one’s parents and not personal factors, then the notion of substantial economic mobility has to be questioned, if not rejected, in terms of the perception of how US society functions.
12. Governmental effectiveness. Finally, we can go beyond specific policies and look to two data sets for the measurement of the overall effectiveness of government and policy making as well as the overall quality of democracy in our thirty-one countries: the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI)—based on expert assessments of several dimensions of good governance in most of the countries of the world—and the data of the Democracy Index project of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Table 10.19 shows five of the WGI measures, averaged over nine years, from 2002 to 2010. The first column contains the averages of the five scores for each country. All of the scores are on a scale ranging from −2.5 to +2.5. The first performance variable, political stability and the absence of violence, measures the likelihood that the government will be destabilized by unconstitutional or violent means, including terrorism. Government effectiveness is a composite measure of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies. Regulatory quality measures the government’s ability to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that promote private sector development. Rule of law is a self-explanatory term; it specifically includes the quality of property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the risk of crime. Control of corruption comprises not only the degree to which public power is used for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, but also the “capture” of the state by elites and private interests (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2010). The table lists the thirty-one countries in decreasing order of the mean scores (in the first column) on these five dimensions. Generally, we find the older democracies above the median score of 1.18 and the newer democracies below the median. The United States is also above the median, but only in thirteenth place. On the individual indicators, the United States ranks between eleventh and fourteenth, except with regard to political stability and the absence of violence, where it is in twenty-third place, well below the median.
Table 10.19. Effective government and policy making in thirty-one democracies, 2002–2010
Source: Based on data in Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi, “Worldwide Governance Indicators,” http://govindicators.org.
The sixth dimension measured by the World Governance Indicators is called “voice and accountability,” defined as the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free press. It is a good comprehensive measure of the quality of democracy.14 Table 10.20 shows the average scores of our thirty-one countries in the years 2002–2010 in decreasing order. The older democracies generally rank higher than the newer ones, but the United States is only in fifteenth place, only one place above the median.
More detailed and inclusive measures of the quality of democracy have been devised by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The average scores (on a 10-point scale) in its three reports for 2006, 2008, and 2010 are shown in table 10.21. The EIU’s overall index of democracy is an average of the scores in five categories. Each category is composed of an average of twelve subcategories. To give a few examples of the questions that the EIU asks about each country, the first category, electoral process and pluralism, includes the following: “Are elections for the national legislature and head of government free [and fair]?”; “Are municipal elections both free and fair?”; “Do laws provide for broadly equal campaigning opportunities?”; and “Do opposition parties have a realistic prospect of achieving government?” Questions in the second category, the functioning of government, are: “Do freely elected representatives determine government policy?”; “[Do] special economic, religious or other powerful domestic groups . . . exercise significant political power, parallel to democratic institutions?”; “Are sufficient mechanisms and institutions in place for assuring government accountability to the electorate in between elections?”; and “Is the functioning of government open and transparent, with sufficient public access to information?” The third category, political participation, has questions about interest and participation in elections, political parties, other organizations, lawful demonstrations, and women’s legislative representation. The fourth category, political culture, focuses on the degree to which citizens express faith in and support for democracy. The fifth category, civil liberties, looks at the traditional freedoms of expression, association, and religion, a free and robust press and other media of communication, equal treatment under the law, and an independent judiciary (Economist Intelligence Unit 2010: 33–42).
Table 10.20. Quality of democracy (voice and accountability) in thirty-one democracies, 2002−2010
Source: Based on data in Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2011, http://govindicators.org.
Table 10.21. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, 2006, 2008, and 2010
Source: Based on data in Economist Intelligence Unit 2006, 3–5; 2008, 4–8; 2010, 3–8. London: The Economist.
Our thirty-one countries are ranked in decreasing order of their scores on the EIU’s overall index of democracy. On this index, too, the older democracies tend to rank above the median and the newer ones below the median, but Spain and the Czech Republic, relatively young democracies, are above the mean. The United States is in twelfth place between these two countries. It is also above the median with regard to political participation (a shared twelfth to fourteenth place with Korea and South Africa) and well above the median on political culture (a shared eighth and ninth place with Germany). However, the United States scores much lower on electoral process and pluralism (a shared twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth place with Israel), functioning of government (nineteenth place), and civil liberties (twenty-seventh place).
FINAL CONCLUSIONS
There are, of course, any number of other areas of public policy that could be discussed, but this chapter has provided an overview of a variety of policy areas, measures, and ideas that demonstrate the ways in which US policy is different from (as well as similar to) other cases in our study. The fundamental issues beyond the description of these outcomes is to point back to the institutional structures of the US government and how they differ from the vast majority of our cases and how that, along with other factors, like culture and historical circumstances, produce some of the differences we see. Certainly there are additional areas of policy that could be included, and each of them could be a chapter, if not a book, by itself.
It should be noted that despite the differences being discussed, all thirty-one of these cases are representative democracies in which the reins of government are placed in the hands of elected officials for a specific amount of time to govern under the constraints of an institutional order created by a constitution. In all of these cases there are substantial political rights in place to allow citizens to pursue their interests and attempt to influence said government. In short, the argument here is not the United States has a different regime type than the other thirty. Rather, just that its democracy does differ on a number of institutional and policy-related parameters. Ultimately, the issue is how a given institutional order creates the circumstances for governance and, hence, policy outcomes. We can return to the notions introduced in chapter 1 and consider the principal-agent model introduced in figure 1.1. The question becomes, in terms of delegation of power and the seeking of accountability, how does this function in the US context? What we have demonstrated is that there are numerous ways to do what Madison described in Federalist 10: “delegate[ed] . . . the government . . . to a small number of citizens elected by the rest” (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 1987: 126). The question of how power is delegated and to whom has been a central theme of this study, especially as it pertains to the creation of veto gates and players. Because of the large number of veto gates in the US system, the authority delegated by the citizens as principals, to the US government as agents is highly diffused. It is diffused between national and state governments, where it is then further diffused to various institutional actors. If we focus just on the national government, power is then divided between two chambers of the legislature and between the legislature and the executive. Consonant with the design of the political engineers of the Philadelphia Convention, this structure decreases the ability for consolidated power to act. On the one hand, diffusion of power means that policy decisions, especially dramatic ones, require consensus building. On the other hand, diffusion of power also makes accountability more difficult. If policies fail, or if inaction creates new difficulties, who is to blame? Should the voters, as principals, punish members of the House, the Senate, and/or the president?
Further, as noted earlier, the diffusion of power in the United States is such that policy formulation and passage is quite difficult, given the number of veto gates and the special veto power inherent in the Senate, especially in the past decade or so as the filibuster has become the norm. Ultimately, the institutional circumstances of the United States are fundamentally conservative, meaning that they lend themselves to maintaining the status quo.
By contrast, our survey of the United States in comparative perspective has shown that most other democracies have institutional configurations that diminish the number of veto gates, and therefore are less complex in their operation. Specifically we found that most of the democracies in our comparison group have a parliamentary executive, proportional representation with multiparty systems, and are more likely to be unitary and unicameral (or at least to have a weaker second chamber). An institutional configuration that approximates the one just sketched implies either one veto gate or one that dominates over the others. With one veto gate primarily shaping government policy, the process of responding to policy challenges may be far less complex, and also more rapid, if a cohesive majority exists in the first or sole chamber of the legislature. Of course, less complex and rapid processes are not always better, but the point is that the policy involves fewer actors who can block a change, which makes policy change more likely.15 In countries with a single veto gate but a coalition government, the one gate is able to be opened only when two or more transacting parties consent to change.16 This adds complexity to the policy-making process beyond the case of a single cohesive majority party, because each of the parties in coalition is a veto player. However, very few coalition-based parliamentary systems have a policy-making process as complex as that of the United States, even if they also happen to be federal.17 The reason is that multiple veto players in such systems are transacting to open the veto gate created by a single dominant institution, the legislature, whereas in the United States, the policy-making process involves separate institutions acting as veto gates.
Of course, evaluations of the situation need to be divided into empirical and normative considerations. Our goal here has been to provide an empirical description of the institutions of democratic governance in the US case and then to detail some of the outputs of that system. Normative preferences on these outcomes range from positive evaluations of a system that must move slowly, to negative in terms of how difficult policy making can be in this context.
Certainly the institutional parameters under which politicians compete for power, and under which they operate when making policy once in power, matter greatly. Regardless of anything else, this analysis should underscore that there is a great deal of institutional variation among functioning democratic states around the world, and that in many ways, the United States of America is different on several key counts from its democratic siblings. We hope that we have inspired more thought and study on this topic.
Notes
1. Many local offices are nonpartisan (see ch. 6) and therefore have no need for a nomination process. It is also worth noting, as a caveat to the assertions, that “any partisan office” uses primaries, that some systems that are called primaries in popular discourse really are not actually true primaries. Examples include the “Top Two” system adopted in 2010 in California, or the so-called jungle primary formerly used in Louisiana. They are not partisan primaries because they make it possible sometimes for both candidates in the general election to come from the same party. Both of these systems are variations on a two-round system that narrows the field of candidates rather than nomination mechanisms.
2. The idea of veto players as theoretical concepts can be found in Tsebelis 1995 and 2002, Tsebelis and Money 1997, Stepan 2004b, and Stepan and Linz 2011. Here we are focusing on a narrow aspect of veto players, i.e., policy making.
3. It is worth noting that we are here speaking of a general campaign issue. The actual legislation as passed does not fully conform to Obama’s stated preferences in the campaign.
4. Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Public Law 111–152).
5. Indeed, it has been assumed that some sort of back-and-forth would take place between the House and Senate, but Senator Kennedy’s death and his replacement with a Republican scuttled that option. The close vote in the House for final passage underscores that many Democrats were not fully happy with the bill.
6. Another example: Virginia ex rel. Cuccinelli v. Sebelius.
7. See the OECD Web page: http://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-policy/.
8. See Christen Simeral, “Debt Ceiling 101,” American Prospect, 2011, available online at http://prospect.org/article/debt-ceiling-101.
9. See http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/resultoutput/trendgraphs.
10. See John Feere, “Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison,” online at http://cis.org/birthright-citizenship.
11. See “Americans Oppose Income Redistribution to Fix Economy” online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/108445/americans-oppose-income-redistribution-fix-economy.aspx.
12. See “Democrats, Republicans Differ Widely on Taxing the Rich” online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/147104/s-republicans-differ-widely-taxing-rich.aspx.
13. It can also, and often is, expressed as being between 0 and 1, with measures given in decimals, e.g., .45 rather than 45.
14. Note that voice here means more than just freedom of speech, but whether popular preferences are effectively translated into government policies.
15. Examples would be New Zealand before its electoral reform in 1996 (as discussed in ch. 5 and other chapters) or the United Kingdom before the coalition that was formed in 2010. In the United Kingdom, there is a second chamber, the House of Lords, but as noted in ch. 7, it is not nearly as powerful in practice as is the US Senate.
16. Prominent examples among our comparative cases would be New Zealand after its change to a Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system in 1996, or the United Kingdom Coalition Government formed in 2010.
17. For example, Germany, where governments are always coalitions, and they must transact with states and a powerful second chamber. However, the second chamber has neither equal representation for different-size states (see ch. 4) nor fully symmetrical legislative authority (see ch. 7).
