After the Public Interest Prevails: The Political Sustainability of Policy Reform

Abstract

The prevailing political science wisdom is that narrow interests regularly triumph over the general public. Yet the stunning passage of broad‐based policy reforms in the face of intense clientele opposition suggests that the U.S. political system has a greater capacity to serve diffuse interests than has often been thought. Some of the most provocative policy‐oriented political‐science research during the 1980s and 1990s examined how these surprising reform victories occurred. Unfortunately, general‐interest reforms do not always stick; reforms may be corrupted or reversed after their enactment. The long‐term sustainability of any given policy reform hinges on the successful reworking of political institutions and on the generation of positive policy‐feedback effects, especially the empowerment of social groups with a stake in the reform&s maintenance. This paper explores the postenactment dynamics of three canonical instances of general‐interest reform legislation: tax reform, agricultural subsidy reform, and airline deregulation. Only in the airline‐deregulation case has the self‐reinforcing dynamic required for political sustainability been unmistakably evident. For analysts and advocates of general‐interest reform measures alike, the clear lesson is to attend far more closely to what happens after reforms become law.

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