Analysis and Assessment of Baumgartner Jones Agendas and Instability in American Politics
I find a certain amount of difficulty when I attempt to offer an assessment of Baumgartner and Jones' work, Agendas and Instability in American Politics. The reason for this is because the book is written in such a manner that it is enormously difficult to offer a conflicting argument to the model they use to describe how issues become part of agenda, the power of interest groups, policy monopolies, how power shifts, and other issues related to the aforementioned. For this reason, I must say that I find their model to be on solid ground. The previous reading assignments in this course which where mostly based on the writings of C. Wright Mills and his protege Robert Dahl read like the thoughts of writers who were desperately trying to convince the reader that they are right. To the contrary, Baumgartner and Jones made no real attempts to "sell" their research and rather presented their findings and beliefs in a way that seems to say to the reader that "this is the way things are". Examples of legislative activity that seem to conform to their model offered to the readers of Baumgartner and Jones are presented in a way that basically shows the reader how their model translates into real life as opposed to an offering of ev
Committees have been described as "little legislatures" (Groseclose and King, 1) and committee chairpersons wield enormous power, which is why party leaders dangle committee memberships to members they are trying to influence. However, the way they present their model creates an illusion of ease and changing the way things operate in the American system of politics is anything but easy. My criticism of Baumgartner and Jones is that, in my opinion, their model is just too simple, too cut and dried and void of any upset or turmoil. In his speech to the AARP, Clinton jostled those who accused his plan of amounting to a cut by saying, "Only in Washington can an increase of twice the rate of inflation be called a cut. When examining issue definition, I discovered that defining or attempting to define issues (sometimes referred to as "spinning") is something I have witnessed on countless occasions. By claiming jurisdictions over new issues, a committee increases its power and the chairperson's power grows as his or her committee finds itself with jurisdiction over more and more issues. " In the end, a Democratic Congress kept the President's plan from ever seeing the light of day. Interest groups will naturally try to influence committees that are friendly to their interests to lay claim to issues that are important to them. In chapter 10 of Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Baumgartner and Jones describe Congress and congressional committees as a "jurisdictional battlefield" (Baumgartner ad Jones, 194). What could result is what I would call a legislative cockfight with the committee chairpersons in the ring and the interest groups outside cheering. Naturally, there was some skepticism about his plan as there is with every idea that would enact a change to an existing government program.
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Acceptance Essays
