Episode 9: The Great Broadening with Bryan Jones, Sean Theriault and Michelle Whyman

Hello and welcome to episode nine of the Policy Agenda podcast. I am E.J. Fagin. Today,

I am joined by my co-host, Christine Bird. Good morning. And three authors of

a book we’re going to talk about. Those three authors are Brian Jones, AJ Hey, Christine. And

also a professor of government at the University of Texas, Sean Farrell High and a soon to be

assistant professor at Florida State University Department, a political science. Michelle. Hello, A.J.

Hello, Christine. Thank you guys for joining us. This is a book that has been a long time coming. We’ve talked

about it on the podcast, kind of on the side a little bit. I think, you know,

Christine, I have been have been watching guys write this book for years. The book is titled The Great Broadening

How the Vast Expansion of Policy of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed American Politics to

Big Title. It’s a big book, Michel. I’m one. And can you explain to us the overall argument you guys

are making? Yeah, absolutely. So what we’re doing is we’re documenting

this vast expansion of the national policymaking agenda. And essentially

all of its effects downstream. And so when we talk about the national policymaking

agenda, what we’re actually talking about, there are the number of issues that the federal

government is addressing at any one point in time. And one of the things that we

find is that there’s this kind of this incremental expansion of that agenda. Government

is addressing more and more discrete issues and it ends in a massive peak at right around

level than they ever have been at any other point in the history of

the of the nation. And we think that there are a whole lot of interesting

explanations for the causes of that expansion, which we address in this book. And then a whole lot

of consequences of that expansion, including things like the proliferation of the

interest group network and the

rise of polarization in Congress and and certainly the thickening

of government, as in them getting more involved in these issues, passing more laws within these

issues over time. And so the book is is focused on documenting

this great broadening. And so the the book is is aptly named. Right, for the exact

phenomenon that we are describing throughout. So I think that’s a general statement

of what the book is about. My coauthors might have some more specific things add to that.

No, I would add one thing that is we’ve also explored the causes

of this great broadening, this bursts of activity that took place from the late

The standard suspects that political scientists always use are definitely involved.

I mean, things like party competition, party control, interest groups,

things like that, elections. But what we found is a very important

role for a wave of social movements that just kept happening, hitting the system

over and over again and are, we think, quite involved in this

great broadening process. So I looked at it. So let’s start we’ve started now talking about

about the causes. So, Sean, I want to give me a little more information on what actually is happening.

So we’ve got three and I’m thinking about three parts in this first segment. So we’ve got some we’ve just got to talk a little bit about the causes

we can get back to that we want about what actually happened and eventually the implications. So what what’s

what what is the great broadening more specifically? So the great broadening is is the

scope of the federal agenda addressed by the American political institutions. So it’s

the policy area by policy area, incremental growth in the amount

of issues that the federal government is considering. We’re talking about everything from

congressional hearings and bill introductions to Supreme Court opinions to bureaucratic

decision making. And so it’s it’s the broad scope of the of

of the of the policy areas that the American political institutions are addressing.

So how do you make that argument? So what data do you do you bring to to

show us that the scope of broad government is broadening? Right. So, of course, the policy agenda project data.

So we’re talking about 20 major topic codes, two hundred and twenty some odd sub topic codes. And

if we’re looking at it, all sorts of different actions that the federal government takes on a regular basis.

So starting at the very beginning, we’re looking at bill introductions. So each bill that’s introduced

in the Congress is a coded according to the scheme. And then we’re looking at congressional hearings and then we’re looking at roll

call votes. Now we’re looking at public laws. Now we’re looking at Supreme Court opinions and we’re looking at

party platforms. From the from the presidential nominating conventions,

we’re looking at bureaucratic decision making, every dataset we have.

We’re throwing everything at the at the at the barn wall. And in in part, that’s why

we became so convinced of our argument, because no matter what data set we looked at, we saw the same basic

trends repeating themselves. And so initially, we might not have been so,

so firm in our beliefs. But when you start looking at the ninth data set and the 10th data set in, the 11th data set

and it’s following this pattern that we had come to expect, we became convinced. And there are two different patterns,

basically, and one’s an arc and we’ve sort of laid that out. We’ve

got more and more issues that were addressed early in the period up to nineteen seventy nine,

seven, eight seventy nine where the peak was. And then things went back down there after that.

And ending of the period of study which is in the early 2000s.

So things like and their signature issue, signature data sets

that can pick up the arc. Things like lawmaking hearings. That is how many hearings

and how many issues are addressed in hearings about laws that makes a beautiful arc.

But there’s a second pattern, too, and it’s just as important because we don’t get this pushback.

This loss of the number of issues addressed, it plateaus. These issues plateau,

signature dataset oversight hearings because you built a big

government in this very short period of time. A much broader government, not necessarily

a government that spends more, but it gets more involved in civic life, plateaus out, doesn’t

go down. The why doesn’t it go down? Because we are not removing government from those issues. Rather,

the party competition has moved on to exploit those issues, to talk about contracting versus

government provision and so forth. The domain of conflict actually adjusted

to these changes. And so, Michelle, we wish we see these two trends. I wonder if you could explain a little bit about

what is what is the actual data that your you are observing. When when Brian or Sean says that

when you said that you have this expansion of issues. Absolutely, so I

think that the data that we rely on most heavily all right. Throughout the book

to demonstrate. Right, this arc, this horseshoe shaped four issues

is the hearings data set, which we think of as the agenda setting

right function of Congress. So if Congress is considering getting into a new

issue area, one of the first things that they’re going to do, one of the first actual manifestations of this on their

agenda is measured in whether or not they hold a hearing on it. And so what you

see is that as they ask, Congress adds

incrementally new issues in their hearing agenda. You get this

this peak right again in the late 1970s and then the hearing agenda drops off. Right. They stopped talking

about the same scope of issues. Right? They’re talking about slightly fewer issues.

And yet this is in contrast to something like the law series. So once Congress

has legislated actually passed law and any one of these issue areas,

even though they can potentially repeal. Right. These underlying laws into the future, what we actually

see instead is although they might not be talking about the issue in hearings anymore. Right.

They are still incrementally passing laws in those areas, which is what accounts for

there being a plateau. There’s no actually bending back of the curve to create the same type of horseshoe

overtime that you have in hearings. Right. So instead, what the lawmaking agenda that just continues

essentially into perpetuity. So once government gets into an issue, it very rarely gets out

of it in the lawmaking agenda, even if it may not be actively talking about

it and the agenda setting. Right. The hearing series, does that make

sense? It does. So there’s an order of operations. You’re absolutely. Yeah. It’s a logical order,

right. So you have first government starts to talk about it and there seems to be a process there.

Then government encodes that into law. And then after the law is encoded, there are things that you see, things like Supreme

Court cases in interest group system. Absolutely. And there are two different patterns that characterize

those two different parts of the policymaking process.

All right. So that earlier part of the process tends to be characterized by that arc pattern, whereas the later

part of the process, once you actually have the codification of law or. Right. And B,

the passing of rules. Right. Not passing. Right. But the codification of rules

in the federal register by the federal bureaucracy. Then you have. Right. A plateau pattern.

Right. Where they’re not actually getting out of those issues once they’re into it in the actual codification

of law or regulatory rules. One fascinating thing about this.

Elaborate on Michelle’s point. If you look at lawmaking hearings,

they’re not considering now as many different topics as they did in 1979. It’s

gone down. On the other hand, the pages of the law that are at that address

issues stays high. That is, they’re addressing in the number of pages

of enactment the same number of issues as large number of issues. It plateaus.

Why is that? Because laws have expanded in their scope. That is, there are more topics

incorporated. And Michelle’s the expert here because of her work in her dissertation and since

it expanded in these areas. But for example, adding more titles to laws to cover

all the new topics that are put in here. One reason for that is you can’t

address one issue area without addressing another issue where there’s this complexity of issues that’s emerged now, this big

government operation, expanding of scope of government.

For example, if you’re going to pass an egg law, you’re going to have to address the environmental consequences

and vise versa. So it might be helpful here to differentiate two different types of

dynamics that we’re talking about. The first one is this broadening. Right. This is what gives title of the book. So it’s the scope

of the government. And then the second thing that we’re talking about is the thickening. So once government broadens

into particular policy areas, then the law starts becoming much thicker. They

have passed many more kind of titles on it and lots of different provisions.

But first comes the brining and then thickening. And I think the literature would suggest we’d talk a whole

lot about the thickening. And so one of the big contributions I think this book offers is the no. We

also have to consider the scope of the policies that the federal government’s considering, not just that the federal government is doing more.

Now, Sean, since we’re talking about implications, I want to move on to talk a little bit about how this transformed politics.

So 1979 is an interesting year in the late 70s are interesting not just because we

have the end of the great broadening and fairly stark end to the great broadening ratio. But

polarization starts to kick off. So does does the rebranding have a transformational effect on U.S.

politics? Yes, it does have a transformational effect in India, maybe I’ll just I’ll step back a little bit

and talk about how I came to be involved in this project, because I think it’s a funny story. So Michelle

and Brian had been working on this paper for a while and the paper was getting bigger and longer and thicker and

shorter. And in there they’re submitting it to journals and. Right. They’re trying to

tackle a whole lot in a single paper. And so they’re trying to figure out what to do with it. And so they they asked me to take

a look at it. So I read the paper and of course, lots of really interesting ideas. And I go

back home and I say, this is a great paper. I like it. Your argument is and I think they you’re you’re right on track.

I was like, but you’re missing the biggest thing about this. And they said, what’s the biggest thing about as a party polarization?

Brian leans back in his chair. He says, That’s exactly what I say. Would you like

to become a co author? And I was like, all right, we’re no longer talking about an article R-WY. We’re talking

about a book. And Brian’s like, absolutely, Michel at that. He talks about that. And

we were running on to these fascinating findings about polarization. It looks like there was not

any before the top of the great broadening. After that, it took off. And

I had looked at some of these issues by looking at Southern versus non-Southern Rep Rip

Republicans to see if it had to do with region. It didn’t. And I said, I can’t go any further

with this. I know a guy that wrote a book about my colleague. We teach together.

All right. So the particular argument that we’re making about polarization is that during the great broadening,

both the Democrats and the Republicans are a little bit ambivalent. What ambivalent, whether or not it’s explicit

or implicit. But there’s this deal that they have that the Democrats are going to broaden

the federal government in certain ways. Things that they really care about in the Republicans are going to focus on their issues. And

the Democrats say that’s fine. Republicans, you focus on your issues, we’ll focus on our issues. And lo and behold, the government

starts year after year, Congress after Congress, law after law starts broadening and all sorts

of different ways. And then we get to the 1970s and Republicans are looking around and being like, wow, the

government has encroached in so many different ways in net about that exact same time. We have

a particular person entering the House Representatives by the name of Newt Gingrich, who in his very first

Congress starts reorienting the Republican Party and in arguing that the Republican Party

has to now become a distinct voice inside the capital. And so he’s trying to

make the parties become more confrontational moment, less of that goal line to get along

with Bob Michael, the Republican leader, up until that point. And so it’s an

explicit strategy of Gingrich, too, to push back on this. And in and Brian does does

a really nice job, I think, in the book of describing how it is that Gingrich uses

some of this intellectual thought that had been percolating since the 1950s and 60s and

utilizing it, recognizing the moment and then pushing this this more confrontational approach

the Republican Party takes towards the Democratic leadership and inside the capital. So is polarization

caused by the great broadening or is it incidental or is it or is it one small piece of polarization?

So. Right. I mean, I have a book that doesn’t include a whole lot about the great broadening and

about how it is that party polarization happens. But I would say that this is a pretty important

piece. And I think the nice thing about what I argue in the great broadening and

party polarization in Congress is the argument is I mean, I wouldn’t say that they feed on each other, but there’s

a consistency there. So right. Part of the party polarization in Congress book is

that is that a lot of the polarization happens as a consequence of procedures. And there’s no doubt that that

happens. But but what the great broadening does is provide the conditions under which Newt Gingrich’s

is able to inflict more of the confrontational nature of the party system

inside me. Oh, please go ahead, Brian. OK. I want to make,

quote, something from the great shots. He said, politics policies

make politics. And we’ve shown that in spades in the great Browning. That is, the policies themselves

had feedback effects. That is the outside

of the inside of the beltway. You got these reactions to the policy, including

Gingrich’s entrepreneurship, to push back on this and downstream effects

took place because of this. That includes things like the thickening of laws, the response

of the interest group system, interest groups built because the policies were there. They

decided either to take advantage of them. And what one of my students call the honey pot theory

from from Pew’s work in

Mr. Rinku, go where the honey is. Or

they’re mad about it and want to push back and limit the scope of government. Winnie the Pooh. And yet

only two. I know, Michelle. Please say something. So I’m

going to add that. Right. We certainly didn’t originate this, but borrowed it from Pearson and I believe

others. So this idea of polit. Terrain. So Joe Wilson

with it, Wilson, Wilson and Pearson. Yes. So it’s it’s a nonpartizan

from the left on the right. So in says right, you’ve got

this entire other book. Right. Talking about causes of polarization right outside of what’s going on

kind of in the policy system. I think that we can all agree, though, that what is going on outside of

outside of the system are actually is generated from within. It is the terrain upon which all of these political battles

are being fought is changing. Right. And the actors within the system are actively changing

it over time, culminating, of course, in a much larger, more active

broad in federal government than I think conservatives found themselves surprised

straight to have to have helped create the. So we find that particular

metaphor helpful in talking about the causes of polarization.

I think we’ve been circling around something that I wanted to ask about at the very beginning, but we’ve alluded to it and

we’re at a point where I think we can talk about it now. But the you know, the expansion of the federal

government is at the detriment to the powers of the state government. So there’s the story of federalism

here that I’d like to hear you guys explain more about. You talked about it in the the conservative backlash chapter.

And I’d love to hear your thoughts on on the scope of just the federal government versus

powers that today led up to the states. Thanks, Christine. That’s a good question. We have

remains to be explored. However, I’d note a couple of things. Much of the

programs that were instituted in the great broadening period actually

enhanced state power by giving them all sorts of resources in lots

of different areas. Now, there was a matching set of proposals and there was

some requirements, but a lot of the battle in the Nixon administration was not

over limited government, but rather how much power you’re going to delegate to the states.

And Nixon administration did things like try to change some of the social programs

to transfer programs, turn them over the states and make them transfer programs, still a part of the Republican

agenda. So the states were both awakened and empowered in this process because

so many more resources came to the states. There were more than happy to use. And of course,

the way the international relations scholars think about donor nations in terms of aid

and recipient nations, recipient nations want to get free of the of the of the strings attached

to the from the donors. And the same is true about the federal government. So it changed the nature of conflict, the terrain,

as Michelle said, change the fight over what we’re fighting about changed.

This might be a helpful interjection, too, in this book really has developed

and had various iterations in one of the most valuable. I think that the three of us would say was fine. We

were able to present this book at a week long conference at Duke University. And I would say that the manuscript that we provided

them really didn’t talk much about federalism. We talked about government action versus private action. And it

was only over the course of those conversations that we realized that there’s this other dynamic that was happening that

we had given short shrift to in the book. And so shortly after the conference, I think that we did some

search find and replaces where we talked about government action and we start talking about federal

government action and trying to differentiate it from from state action in and also from private individuals.

There’s something in the just the course of history that whenever this book was first presented to me,

in one of the course, it’s very pupae talks. The Commerce Clause doctrine follows this. So

the Supreme Court says, you know, the government can do pretty much anything through the commerce clause and which seems to really give rise

as as one point to the great branding, which is definitely in question. Good point. And it would be

something interesting to explore. How did that empower? It certainly was

critical in the civil rights area and lots of other areas, too. By the way, the Supreme Court,

a number of issues the Supreme Court address, the addresses during this period of time makes an arc

and that goes along with the number of cases the Supreme Court is taking

that that’s an art, too. And Justice Scalia once was asked about it. You guys

just here now and used to be and he said, no, our job is to interpret statutes. And they passed a lot of statutes

back in that period when we were so active. Well, that’s the great broadening reflected in the

court. Nothing more. Nothing less. Michel, you have a piece

in this book that I think you wrote this part about that the SERT advancement. Now, do you want to

talk about that? Oh, yes. Briefly. So the Supreme

Court’s agenda is it’s not something that they have a unilateral jurisdiction

over. Of course, they rely on the cases that are appealed up to them or the.

So she. All right, Richard Scrushy, she or. Right. That come up to them and they grants or she or they grant

the hearing. Right. To right. These these cases.

Right. That are brought to them. So they have some control over their agenda. But it’s not unilateral control

like Congress does. And so they rely on issues to come up to them, percolate up through.

Right. Lower courts. And so the Supreme Court’s agenda in part

and I’m not sure this is the part that you’re talking about, but I think it’s worth mentioning here the Supreme Court’s agendas

and parking to be determined by what the federal government. Right. Is doing and what indeed state

governments are doing. Right. So it’s broadening over time right into different issue

areas is going to rely on cases dealing with statutory law or

state law. So federal law or state law and in those areas being percolated up to them through

the lower courts and finally arriving on their agenda. And so what we see in the Supreme Court’s agenda

is that the mix of cases that they actually do end up hearing and indeed issuing decisions

on broadens as well. But it’s a broadening that follows. Right. The branding of the

federal government and the broadening of we think although we don’t directly measure it, but it’s got to be happening,

the broadening of state agendas as well. So your data ends in the 1940s

and so you can’t go back farther. But my my thought reading this has always been. What about the new

deal, Suzanne? The first part first question is, is the new Deal great broadening Virgin

One or even two with the great the Progressive Era? And if so,

why did it not have similar consequences to trend, to polarization and any of the other

things that you demonstrate in this book? That’s if you don’t. Go ahead, Michel.

So I think that I’ll I’ll give this off to Brian after really quickly noting that

if you look at data that’s not included in the book, but the

provisions of federal law that have been passed from the founding of the nation up to

the near present, and you actually graph out the number of issues

that those provisions are dealing with. What you see is that, yes, the New Deal

added some new issues, some really important new issues to the federal government agenda. But it doesn’t

actually represent a peak that is near as big, near as expansive

as that that we find right in the 1970s. And so that

just kind of some background information on the great broadening really is great. And it is, in fact,

the greatest that we find even looking at data that includes lawmaking

from the beginning of the nation. So with that background, Brian, please know you’re

your best fantastic cheesy expert in this. And I hope her upcoming book will be read as

as much as I want ours to be read, because it’ll be pathbreaking and trying to understand lawmaking

since the dawn of the republic. What’s the title of that? Let’s just plug durable law.

Durable law. Give a date on it yet? No, not yet. It’s to be.

I’m sure she’s busy at work on it right now. Better because he has got

a high powered appointment at a very fine university apartment

in particular. So yeah, I think Michelle is basically right about this. And I think about it, the new

deal was focused on a limited number of our major topic areas. It expanded

in social welfare. It was. Or what the governor was already involved. I suspect in economic areas. But Michelle’s

the expert here from look at the provisions of the law. And it did change

the the outcomes there. And I’m not sure that we can measure,

Miles, certainly polarization doesn’t seem to have been one of them. But I do think it changed the tenor

of the debate. And certainly Republicans became very concerned about the

expansion of big government in the 40s and 50s. Now, that probably got destabilized by the war.

But I think we’d had that debate perhaps earlier and we were rotating towards civil

rights. And we’re going to have a bigger federal government. Why not? Why doesn’t it get involved in civil rights and all

of the push to the civil rights activist in the 40s and 50s as black G.I.s came back

home and came to the same old segregated system of the South? We begin to see these expansions

occurring earlier in the Eisenhower administration. We see some of it there and things like bill reductions, very

clear and billion reductions where you don’t have to sit around a wait for a southern committee chair

to have a hearing on civil rights. You start introducing bills and putting some pressure

on the system that way. And that shows up in our data. This is something I might add

here, too, if we think about the progressive era as being around one of the great broadening and then.

To write the New Deal. The one thing that I might add is that while we have it at the

very beginning of the progressive era, right, we have reconstruction, but civil war rights to the Civil War is this great

kind of an external shock to the way that the federal government

acts. And then you get right, the expansion and then what happened shortly thereafter is you get massive polarization.

Right. And then we have the new deal right. That the economic collapse, the new deal leading into World War Two,

and eventually that works its way. And also another great period of polarization. And I wonder if there aren’t some

some more cyclical trends. There might not be fruitful areas of future research.

So, E.J., now we’re talking about this this morning about so you you see this cyclical pattern in the United States. Where

where else would you expect to see this in the world? Yeah, well well, there are so

the polit we have a comparative policy agendas project. Unfortunately, the dad and

most of these countries doesn’t go back that are members of the comparative

network. Don’t go back far enough to to look at things like the great broadening in

European and other countries. But Denmark does. And so I was able to take that

from Denmark and show that the arc and plateaus happened there to happen later than the

US. But there was a definite broaden of Danish government, broadening of Danish government in the 70s

and 80s, and a plateau where the issues passed into the system and got incorporated into

bureaucracy and law. So I suspect it might be a more general pattern. We just don’t know.

We don’t have the data. But what we do it it looks promising. Well, when I ask you to speculate on that just a little

bit. So you observe this this pattern later, later in Denmark. So conceivably, if we have

the data or some might find out in front of a different research designed to measure a similar thing, you could you

would go across maybe all European countries or or even all countries to see if that

similar curve takes place. And at particular time, it seems to me like the book kind of offers two

explanations for when that would be. One would be that it’s essentially a force of nature that eventually government is going

to expand and do all policy areas, and that tends to take place in a big episodic shock. And

the other is that it’s forced onto the agenda by agents, by social movements and by people.

So would you expect essentially there to be a point in a country’s development where this occurs,

or would you expect it to be fairly random throughout countries and really determined by the individual agents in that country?

Well, you’re asking the classic historical agency problem, and that’s that’s hard one to answer because

that’s hard to rule out counterfactuals. I don’t think anything happens.

What we used to call in sociology function lists in a funk’s list explanation, it’s

there’s a funks a need for something to be taught for a function to be fulfilled. So

the government does it. I’m one who believes that human agency matters

and no shot of michel.. do as shown because he wrote a book about an agent.

You know, Gingrich said, can you imagine the great the end of the great Browning happening without Gingrich

coming along? I don’t know. I mean, you can’t do that counterfactual. Similarly with

with countries across the world, I suspect their agents that are pushing this.

I suspect in Europe, though, they won’t be the same agents. I think the parties will be more involved in this. They’ll

capture the issues through the party structure, sometimes by the emergence of minority parties,

so that the nature in which that’s filtered into the political system is going to probably

differ quite a bit. But does it all happen? Of course, there’s

also a lot of copying, mimicking and learning from each other

that works. Well, let’s try it. They’re doing it there and you get pressure on the system that way.

I’ll give you an example of one issue like that fits this very well.

And that’s the the smoking question. So certainly started to be addressed.

The United States during the great broadening period took a long time to bring it to fruition.

But in the 2000s, I was traveling a great deal to Denmark, where I have an affiliation. And

my colleagues in Denmark said, well, the one thing we won’t have is smoking regulations or you

have many other states because this is freedom. And I said income, because

you’re going to get anti-smoking activists that catch on to the same sort of issue definitions that the United

States activists did. And it worked and it worked basically through

diffusion of of the innovation of the arguments across state governments.

What effect does the great broadening have on the party system? The party system specifically in the in

the United States? So we’ve mentioned I think maybe maybe we can actually go back a little bit. Talk about

how both parties participate in the great broadening. I think I think if you ask somebody who wasn’t

as well read this, they might say that the Democrat Party won big majorities in the 60s and will control the presidency,

control the House for a long period of time. And so they decided to expand the role of government. And Republicans

probably weren’t crazy about that. But you guys actually make a different argument about this period and a different argument

about the period afterwards. Shone out right to what we would say is that

there’s no doubt that the Democratic majorities are pushing the idea that

the agenda of what we would say is that the Republicans were a little bit complicit in this in this

agenda expansion. There might have been certain elements within the Republican Party, but not the Republican

Party leadership in. So how it could be that the Democrats are expanding

and in three or four or five different areas of law are the Republicans are doing it one,

two or three different areas of the law in both parties are expanding in a way that

that the other party doesn’t necessarily disagree with. It’s just that that’s not part of what

they’re about. And so as the agenda is expanding, the parties

are are taking on more and more of these different issues. Until. I would argue

that it comes to a breaking point the late 1970s where Republicans decide that they want to be a majority party.

And one of the ways that they can try and do this is become a confrontational party. So thanks to

a reviewer who I won’t mention, but I know is we had to specify

a better what the pushback. The counter mobilization that

took place. How did that happen and through what mechanisms? So we took

a look at some issues that the Republicans were successful, conservatives were successful

in, in implementing it. I want to mention one. And that’s deregulation. Deregulation fits

the pattern that Sean described. Exactly. And if you take price deregulation,

remember back then in the in the 30s, we had a lot of regulatory

price structures put into place. And there were there were two sorts

of attacks intellectually on these systems of regulation.

On the one hand, the economists said this is just not good market strategies. It doesn’t

lead to efficient pricing. On the other hand, the public administration scholar said there’s

cozy governments here call subsystems. And starting with

an article by Samuel Huntington in 1950, political scientist has decided

these were pretty cozy subsystem. Deregulation in price areas was

supported as a consequence, both by Democrats and Republicans. Both Gerry Ford

and Jimmy Carter supported price deregulation. And as a consequence, it

went easy. The difference had to do with safety regulation, where Ford wanted to deregulate. Carter

didn’t. So he began to get divisions on these issues for sure. But there was a lot of cooperation

on these things. Second, the most of our arguments during that period of time

were about solutions, not about whether government should be in that area, but whether or not

what kind of solutions we should should structure. As I said earlier, Nixon

was very interested in decentralizing and and and taking

what he called the social service state. Although social workers out of government and do transfer payments. So

you’d have less government and more ability of people not to vote for the Democratic Party

in that case. And more reason to vote for the Republican Party. Fascinating story

of of agreement, but differences on solutions, not on what problems ought to be addressed.

All right. So I’d like to begin wrapping up and I’ll give you guys a second to think about the question while my vamp a little bit

is the question is going to be, what should people listen to this podcast read on these subjects? In

addition to your book, the book is at is from University Chicago Press. It’s coming out in June.

It has three or 28 pages. And I love this, I think like eighty eight or something like that figures.

Yeah, we did lots of pictures. Yeah. So it’s a picture book. It’s

a figure every three and a half pages. So given that now that I’ve said that

Michel won’t you go first. What what should people read. So I might read Lowy

from 1967 and the name of the book actually is ACM trying to find it right now.

So the end of liberalism, I believe that is right. Yes. I think in addition now

excuse me, it’s in its second edition now. It’s more expensive, but the comes pretty early.

Awesome. So I might also just fur.

I might also want people to read some of all. Fine. So

simply write to me as a contrast strike ’cause we we

end up arguing. Right, that the interest group right. Structure.

Right, that nut network doesn’t actually end up expanding until after the great

broadening where as all thing I end up arguing and

did for a very long time can be quite persuasive in literature that it’s actually the interest group structure

itself that is going to drive government getting involved in any new issue areas. And that’s just not what we find.

And so I think it’s a really interesting. trast. to one of the major consequences of the great

branding in the book I saw, I would I would urge people to read that not only because

it’s classic but but also because of the contrast with their own argument. Sean

I saw in its fair that I don’t take an opportunity to plug my own work here,

but I’m going to plug the work of my coauthors. Right. So I think that Baumgartner and Jones agendas an instability, right

as each is required. I think it it gives a lot of insight into a lot

of the trends that we we ultimately talk about. But but I think equally important and perhaps more importantly,

I hope Brian doesn’t mind me suggesting this is terrible law. What we do, I think in this book

is is provide a pretty interesting narrative for what takes place in the latter half of the 20th

century. I think what Michelle does is she puts this into a little bit broader

context. And so I think that I write taking a look at Michelle’s book when it comes

out would be a great companion piece with this one. Our brand new book is not by any of you.

Hey, before you do that, I’m gonna mention

some cost, some controversy in my own mind. And that was were the

dynamics we laid out and agendas and instability, simply a historical accident

that took place during the great bronzing. A lot of breakup of subsystems happened then. And part of the van EMMICK

we described is the intensity with which government involved got involved in those areas

and the crackup of those subsystem. So being self-critical as it were,

wrong about that. And then like manna from heaven, along comes Boeing and says, here’s a captured

subsystem and it’s getting the shot Snyder type publicity.

It ought to. It’s expanded in the public sphere and into Congress. This is front of

a 737, Max. That’s right. But let me suggest a couple of other

more recent things that I’d take a look at, the work of my colleagues and Jacob

Hacker and Paul Pierson in their more recent work. I think if you took that,

the books that they’ve done recently little more popular and put them in the framework of the great

Bronnie, you could learn a lot of things. I’ve learned a lot from Paul and Jacob themselves.

And certainly one would think of some of the pantha PNAC work that Paul’s done.

It shows up in punctuate equilibrium and in the agendas and instability.

But it’s also an independent contribution in comparative politics that I think fits in and we address

in the book. And I’ll also cite the work of David Mayhew, who was a reviewer on this book and

helped us quite a bit. David’s work on divided government is one of those, I believe

and I want to ask you this. I believe it was a bottom up question. It looks like to me

that divided government doesn’t differ from unified government as much as you guys think.

Anyway, I found the data. Show it. Well, a lot of what we did here was bottom up, and that is

we looked at the trends. I saw these trends. This doesn’t fit the story that we’ve been taught about American politics.

And is it something broader? No pun intended. So I would suggest

those those books and in particular, start with David’s work on

divided government. And just two men to men mine real quick. So also, when I’m thinking of him,

I’m thinking of his rise and decline of nation. Right. Absolutely. Shawn,

Brian Michel, thank you for joining us. Christine, thank you for co-hosting. Our next episode will be reported

from the great country of Denmark, where Brooke Shanno will be interviewing Christopher Green Petersen on his new

book, Each Issue Competition. Until then, thank you, everybody, for listening. This has been your Policy Agendas

podcast.