Collective Action Problems

• Collective action problems address how communities resolve conflict
• It looks at cooperation and commitments problems, coordination problems, diverse and conflicting preferences, and costs of bargaining/compromise

Prisoner’s Dilemma

• Group welfare maximizes if everyone cooperates, but individuals have an incentive to defect
• In politics, working together is better than acting alone
• Uncertainty needs trust that each with cooperate as agreed
• Trust establishes commitment mechanisms
• Defection needs to be costly enough to maintain cooperation via creation of institutions to guarantee agreements
• Public Goods Production, a non-excludable benefit needs national defense, public roads, etc.
• Universal taxation solves this dilemma
• Undesirable side-effects of someone's choices, which affect others are externalities
• Examples include pollution, non-vaccination, and exploiting common resources
• Regulations, pricing externalities, and property rights solve this dilemma

Free-rider Problem

• If the group is large enough, someone's contribution to the collective action might be small, and they could benefit without contributing
• Group benefit isn't shared equally
• Individuals who don't benefit as much as others might not contribute

Tragedy of the Commons

• Public goods are available if one consumes even without contributing
• Cooperation is required to maintain the public good or keep it from disappearing

Coordination Problems

• Members must have similar preferences for an outcome
• Uncertainty or information problems ensue
• Assigning (Delegate) power is better than no coordination
• Standardization results include QWERTY keyboard, building codes, driving on the right

Political Institutions

• The costs and benefit tradeoffs of political institutions are:
• Governance is costly (time, money, attention)
• Government is imperfect (agency problems: elected leaders don't do what we want)
• Conformity costs

Trade-Offs

• Institutions that privilege one value diminish others
• Weaker states impose lower conformity costs, but often less efficient and cannot solve certain problems
• Need to establish a Constitution for political institutions
• Constitutions specify the authority of an institution

Authority

• Authority is assigned to the office, not the office holder
• Authority without power exists
• Power is influence or the ability a person has to achieve goals

Representation in Government

• Representatives must pursue constituents' interests in a manner at least potentially responsive to their wishes
• Conflicts must be justifiable

The Constitution

• Examines the Articles of Confederation: problems, solutions, and bargaining over alternatives
• Articles established a confederation, not a federation; power was decentralized and the national government was limited

Extreme Collective Action Problems

• The result of a weak national government, unable to enforce states' agreements to pay taxes
• Entire states free riding to provide public goods
• Major changes required unanimous agreement, a coordination and cooperation issue
• The US was weak to foreign threats, could not establish trade agreements or respond to foreign sanctions
• Faced domestic unrest from economic troubles, and was unable to respond to violent Rebellion (e.g. Shay's rebellion)
• An alternative form of governance was needed to establish popular sovereignty and balance of power
• Conflicting views dictate:
• What government should look like
• Prioritizing governance needs consent
• Disagreements about power and authority constraints
• Separation of powers
• Federalism
• Balancing state and national interests

Arguments of separation of powers

• Include factions, scope of national government, and federalism from the Federalists and Anti-Federalists:
• Federalist 10 implicitly highlights the benefits of collective action problems
• Federalist 51 argues for the separation of powers as a solution for controlling politicians/government
• Federalist 39 explains US government character
• It argues that the Constitution is both national and federal; a combination of the two
• It addresses Anti-Federalist criticisms that the Constitution gave too much power to the national government
• Federalist 46 asserts advantages State governments have securing support, resisting encroachments
• Brutus states it will be impossible for states to get power back
• Governing larger territories leads to less responsive government
• Potential rights concerns exist with a national army
• Federalists opposed confederation
• Supplant states are sovereign units
• Empowering a strong, central government

Anti-Federalists supported confederation

• Reform the AoC
• Keep state basis of national government

Final Outcome

• Federalists mostly won, shown in modern day federalism
• Examining state and subnational government

Constitutional Development

• Look at the American political institutional design
• It addresses diverse States' interests like big vs. small states, coastal vs. non-coastal states, reliance on slavery, and traders/mercantilists vs farmers

Solutions

• Virginia Plan:
  • Close to a pure unitary system
  • Bicameral national legislature (survives)
  • Lower chamber representatives determined by state population and directly elected (survived)
  • Lower house elected upper chamber, executive, and judiciary (did not survive)
  • National government enforced authority (survived in part)
    • States inferior to national government
    • National government could veto state laws
    • Enforce collection of taxes, including military force
    • Problems existed for states' rights advocates
• New Jersey Plan:
  • Close to a pure federal system
  • Equal vote distribution across states legislature (survived)
  • Prioritized states' rights but allowed national enforcement of tax collection
  • Simple majority legislature could enact national policies
  • Plural executive can be removed by legislature

The Great Compromise

• Everyone recognized that the Articles of Confederation were inadequate

Decisions

• Executive, indirectly elected by state (electoral college)
• Bicameral legislature
  • One chamber by population (House), another by state & bh state legislatures (Senate)
• Extensive national powers, reserved for the states, but states remain sovereign
• The Constitution addresses collective action problems

Foreign Policy

• States needed to cooperate and coordinate negotiations with other countries, regarding commerce and trade
• Congress has explicit legislative authority to regulate commerce (commerce clause)
• States cannot make any foreign alliance or treaty
• Interstate commerce occurs but states need to cooperate and states need Congress's consent to enter agreements, and they cannot print their own money
• States cannot discriminate against each other/citizens

Separation of Powers

• Creates checks and balances to protect against branch domination
• Legislative branch: Congress
• Executive branch: President and bureaucracy
• Judicial branch: Supreme Court and lower federal courts
• Federalist 51 supports the separation of powers

Federalism and Civil Liberties

• How democratic is the Constitution?
• Dahl argues that the Constitution contains many undemocratic elements like Slavery, suffrage, Presidential elections, and Senate structure
• Article III has the potential for considerable Judicial power and no explicit limits
• Elements necessary for agreement/compromise were unintentional
• Americans overestimated the dangers of popular majorities and underestimated the strength of the developing democratic commitment
• Civil liberties are protections from government power, to protect freedoms away.
• Designed to limit government's ability to impose conformity costs on people who aren't in the majority

Federalism

• Creates the jurisdictional boundaries between states and the federal government and authority decisions

10th Amendment

• Powers is unassigned to the United States, are reserved to the States respectively
• Federal government has substantial power

Types of Federalism

• Dual federalism: States and the national government operate in isolation, Mutually exclusive spheres of sovereignty
• Shared federalism: state and national levels intersect and overlap public provisions, taxation, and public law

Congress

• Motivations for members of Congress comes from the idea of Reelection
• Which leads them to engage in specific activities:
  • Advertising
  • Keeping in touch with constituents
  • Credit-claiming
    • Take personal responsibility for government actions and policies
  • Position-Taking
• Responsible party government and the procedural cartel theory says there must be clear party policy during elections and then implementation
• Success comes from party discipline through member vote
• Cox and McCubbins argue that procedural cartels set the agenda via both positive and negative agenda control
• Legislative styles depend on the legislator
  • Some are policy specialists, some are party soldiers, some are district advocates, some are party builders, and some are ambitious entrepreneurs
• Legislators must be informed to write effective legislation (information is a public good) through committee groups
• Congress manages complex legislation pieces and directs legislative processes via power delegation to party leaders
• Must be able to resolve conflicts due to diversity of interests, districts, and policy preferences across Congress
• Rules, customs, and procedures offer structure to debate and ways to problem-solve; political parties maintain the long-standing coalitions
• Need to overcome individual incentives to defect given varied goals through collective action for national policy via committee system incentives to enforce long term bargains
• Legislative institutions solve collective action programs to facilitate bargaining, theory on why Congress organized into a committee system, longer term bargains and problems

Congress

• Senators/Representatives vote
• Senate doesn't have a rules committee
• Unanimous consent agreements, controls agenda
• Motivations for the committee system include managing the legislative workload, checking the executive branch, and resolving issue preferences through specialization
• Parties in Congress through coalitions and shared preferences

The Presidency

• The president as commander in chief and head of state + chief executive
• Executive branch is left to Congress but can do only so much
• President matters of state and foreign affairs represents the US as the Head of State, negotiates treaties with foreign countries, and conducts policy
• The President is the commander in chief of the military
• The President administers and implements laws as leader
• Limitations on presidential power (included in the Constitution):
  • Senate approval needed
  • Congress must declare war
  • Presidential appointments of top management positions in the Executive branch require Senate confirmation
  • Congress must approve the budget
• Presidents lead by persuading others that their interests coincide with them, credibility as a persuader
• Presidents take action to make policy outside of the formal legislative process
• Executive agreements occur and are modified, orders have the force of law but are not permanent, memoranda reduce attention
• Canes-Wrone's Theory of Public Appeals: Presidents influence Congress by getting electorate involved through policy issues

Presidency

• "The Delegation Dilemma"
• Complex policy problems bring forth many complications:
  • Informational asymmetries
  • Transaction and coordination problems
  • Labor/time constraints
• Expertise leads to a need to delegate:
  • VOTERS – delegate the process of legislating and lawmaking to elected officials
  • LEGISLATORS – delegate to bureaucrats to enforce, implement, and policies details
• Delegating increases the ability to act on decisions
• Dangers occur through giving up power to actors who could pursue their own interests
• Limited danger occurs depending on the separation of powers

Bureaucracy

• The civil service is comprised of non-appointees for can be removed the Merit systems protection board
• Forms of Government dictate: Departments, Authority, agencies, and Executive

Congress

• Controls the bureaucracy by types of oversight, red tape. What happens during and after policymaking during Oversight!
• Congress can implement white intervention
• Legislation comes from Congressional hearings to evaluate

Kinane studies

• Presidents strategically delay or avoid Senate confirmation when it aids their policy agenda
• Krause and O'Connell study how effective choice changes over time
• Longer service time, presidents are more effective at choosing appointees, regardless of Senate loyalty or affiliation
• More seniority, presidents place weight on competence for top appointees and less weight for subordinates
• Federal law is interpreted by the judiciary

Federal Judiciary

• It is from constitution: Article 3, Section 1
• States the judicial power of the US and supreme Court can be established by Congress
• SCOTUS is specified, but size is undefined
• Justices are given lifetime tenure
• Scope of issues they cover in specific cases
• No clear evaluation/judging
• Vague descriptions of power limitations
• Descriptions of state court relationships
• Judicial power has threats and limitations
• Dynamic Court views says courts activist, powerful, and vigorous
• Constrained Court views says courts point to actors/institutions who make constitutional choices

Explanations of Supreme Court decisions are based on:

• Facts, merits, precedents
• Ideology
• Politics (anticipated reaction)
• Public recognition of the court
• Courts have issues
• Enforcement mechanisms
• Must rely on the Exec
• Congress can determine many features of courts
• Judges and justices have formal nominations to fill vacancies
• President selects judicial norms