Reviews for The making of economic policy

The average rating for The making of economic policy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-20 00:00:00 William Keenan An interesting take in the motivations and mechanisms of legislative work, scientifically dismantling a few myths about how constituencies, either general or particularist, influence legislators’ actions.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-04-12 00:00:00 Brian Freund Mahew's Congress: The Electoral Connection pitched the novel idea "Legislators are interested solely in reelection". This begs the question: how does anything get done in Congress if everyone's solely self-interested in their own re-election? (Arguably, the past 6 years have shown us Congress does not work.) Arnold attempts to provide a solution to this puzzle. (Mahew's puzzle, not the 112-114th congresses inability to function.) It's actually quite an elegant framework, that's slightly too elaborate to succinctly summarize. In a nutshell: Arnold investigates various simple models of voter behaviour, and legislators acting based on these heuristics. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this, to me anyways, is describing the behaviour of "coalition leaders" who happen to be legislators...since this really gets to the meat of "No really, how do members of congress actually get stuff done? Or even start the attempt?"