Fortunately, though, there's probably more kick left in angry U.S. voters than either sclerosis gurus or Washington lobbyists believe. Over the past few years Rauch has repackaged political economist Mancur Olson's 1982 thesis The Rise and Decline of Nations, and has just published a new book, Demosclerosis, to explain why government keeps malfunctioning. Reasonable enough so far. Bill Clinton hasn't overcome gridlock in part because he hasn't acknowledged that it goes so much deeper than government divided by branches and parties. Olson's underpinning theory is that national economies make their great strides when they are young and have few interest groups, or in the wake of revolutions or wartime defeats that have decimated their elites.
Economic growth slows or stagnates.
Rauch, then, is relatively gloomy about U.S. public policymaking. Bringing the federal budget deficit under control, meanwhile, is virtually impossible because pro-spending interest groups have too much power. Here is where the interest-group fixation and outdated definitions of demosclerosis start losing touch with reality. These powerhouses had a lot more clout in backstage Washington than the pro-deficit groups out to spend the money on farmers, mass transit and jobless workers. More and more U.S. policymaking influence comes from new elites, multinational lobbies and special interests that have yet to be fully recognized.