The Government Taketh Away
Subtitle: The Politics of Pain in the United States and Canada (American Governance and Public Policy)
Contributors: Leslie Pal (Editor); Kent Weaver (Editor)
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: April 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9780878409013
Subjects: American studies; Central government policies; Local government policies; United States; Political Science; Canada; Politics / Current Events; Public Policy - General; Politics/International Relations; USA; General; 1993-2001; 1980-; Comparative government; Politics and government; Politics - Current Events
First sentence: DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IS ABOUT MAKING CHOICES, AND SOMETIMES THOSE choices inflict pain.
Description: Democratic government is about making choices. Sometimes those choices involve the distribution of benefits. At other times they involve the imposition of some type of lossa program cut, increased taxes, or new regulatory standards. Citizens will resist such impositions if they can, or will try to punish governments at election time. The dynamics of loss imposition are therefore a universal if unpleasant element of democratic governance. Examines the repercussions of unpopular government decisions in Canada and the United States and compares the capacities of the U.S. presidential system and the Canadian Westminster system to impose different types of losses: symbolic losses (gun control and abortion), geographically concentrated losses (military base closings and nuclear waste disposal), geographically dispersed losses (cuts to pensions and to health care), and losses imposed on business (telecommunications deregulation and tobacco control). [back cover].