R. Kent Weaver

Think Tanks in the U.S. Media

This article examines the relative media visibility of expertise from a sample of fifty-one public policy think tanks in six national newspapers between 1991 and 1998. We consider media visibility in relation to hypotheses developed from the interest group, media studies, and policy sciences literature and, using regression and descriptive analysis, establish that Washington-based think tanks and think tanks of no identifiable ideology have a distinct advantage in gaining media visibility. Ideologically conservative think tanks are cited with a substantially higher frequency than identifiably liberal ones in the aggregate but not once we control for their greater budget resources, except in more conservative news outlets, where they continue to be advantaged. Disparities in the budget resources of think tanks account for substantial variation in their media visibility, as do ideological and geographic biases linking specific think tanks and media outlets.

Improving Representation in the Canadian House of Commons

Canadas single-member plurality (SMP) rules for elections to the House of Commons have a number of disadvantages, including their tendency to promote severe underrepresentation of the governing party in some regions, reward regionally concentrated parties, lead to single-region dominance of the governing party caucus and underrepresent women, Aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Electoral reforms proposed to weaken these effects, especially proportional representation and “mixed-member corrective” systems, generally make single-party majority governments almost impossible. After reviewing alternatives, this article presents a simulation of the effects of a system featuring a limited number of compensation seats designed to award most of these seats to the parties that garner the most votes nationwide. This system could help rectify many of the problems associated with the current SMP system while only modestly lowering the prospects for single-party majority government.

Lashed to the Mast? The Politics of Notional Defined Contribution Pension Reforms

Over the past decade, a number of countries have adopted a new form of pension system known as “notional defined contribution” (NDC) pensions. Like traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions, NDC pensions operate largely on a pay-as-you-go basis, but base benefits on total lifetime contributions rather than those in a specified number of peak earnings years. Payroll tax rates are (at least in theory) permanently fixed, while adjustments necessitated by demographic change and slow economic growth are automatically made on the benefit side. The authors argue that adoption of NDC-based reforms reflects political as well as policy considerations. The article analyzes a variety of conditions that have led some countries to adopt NDC-based reforms while such reforms have not even reached the agenda in others. The authors point out a number of problems that may arise during implementation of NDC-based reforms that undercut their potential benefits, and argue that erosion of NDC-based reforms is more likely than outright reversal.

Political Institutions and Conflict Management in Canada

Several features of Canadian political institutions have contributed in important ways to Canadas constitutional discontent. The system of plurality elections in single-member districts to the House of Commons tends to exaggerate regional differences in support for political parties, leading to some regions being severely underrepresented in the governing party caucus. This perceived exclusion has heightened regional alienation, especially in western Canada. Federalism in Canada has empowered provincial majorities, but it has also created grievances among provincial minorities and increased the visibility and perceived legitimacy of provincial government leaders rather than federal politicians as spokespersons for regional interests. A veto-ridden constitutional amending formula, and the failure of the last two rounds of constitutional negotiations, strengthen the argument made by politicians favoring Quebec sovereignty that no package of reforms meeting Quebecs aspirations is likely to win approval in the rest of Canada.

Are Parliamentary Systems Better

16 The Brookings Review Summer 1985 CR I T I C S of the American political system have repeatedly charged that its fragmentation of power makes it incapable of governing a modern society. The constitutional system of checks and balances and a weak party system, it is alleged, prevent the federal government from making decisive and rapid policy choices ? and complicate the implementation of those choices once they are arrived at (or muddled to). The results are said to be incrementalism or stalemate, leading to poor performance in such crucial areas as economic growth and the reduction of energy dependence.1 The British parliamentary model is often adduced as both inspiration and exemplar for reforms in this country.2 But do parliamentary systems actually perform better than the American one? While separating out the variables that contribute to differing policy outcomes across nations is a notoriously difficult task,3 this article will suggest that the answer to the foregoing question is likely to be negative. The point to be made is that there is a large gap between the the oretical potential of parliamentary systems and their actual performance. This essay outlines reasons for this gap, drawing upon evidence from the two parlia mentary nations that are culturally most similar to the United States: Great Bri tain and Canada.

Policy Feedbacks and Pension Policy Change

Over the last two decades the literature on public policy has placed a strong emphasis on the role of policy feedbacks, especially in explaining patterns of policy stability over time within particular policy sectors (Pierson, 1993, 2000, 2004). Central to this argument is a claim that positive feedbacks tend to lead to the growth of supportive constituencies around policies in place and to the truncation of reform options considered, resulting in stable policy regimes. This is nowhere more true than in the case of pensions. Myles and Pierson (2001), for example, argue that pension programs, while undergoing incremental cutbacks, have largely avoided fundamental change even in the face of severe demographic and financial pressures.

Comparative Policy Process

Comparative Policy Process is a first-semester core course in the two-year Masters in Public Policy (MPP) program at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. MPP students take three semester-length “institutions and processes” courses – covering the policymaking process, public management and ethics – along with core training in microeconomics (two semesters) and statistics for program evaluation (three semesters). Each of the three institutions and processes courses is offered in both domestic and comparative versions; thus MPP students take either Comparative Policy Process or a US-focused Policy Process course. In recent years, more than half of the students in the MPP program have chosen the comparative course, reflecting the McCourt School’s internationally diverse student body (the 2014 entering class was 49 per cent non-US, from 20 countries). Roughly equal amounts of time are spent on wealthy and late-developing countries. The course has been taught every year since 2003, in multiple sections, by Professor KentWeaver. Other instructors have taught additional sections of the course, generally using the same format.