POL SCI 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act
Document Summary
How centralized congress will be: centralization increases capacity to solve collective action problems and coordinate, comes as the price of reduced individual autonomy. The two most crucial institutional structures created to exercise. Congress" constitutional powers are: the parties, the committee system. Shared policy goals: coordinate strategy (so win votes, policy battles, solve collective action problem: get members to contribute to passing party agenda. Party reputation / brand name: solve collective action problem: get members to contribute to building good party reputation. When majority party members are (mostly) unified on policy, delegate more to leaders: leader as agent of his members, overcome transaction costs of legislating, lower conformity costs than if party is divided. But when party members are not unified on policy, incentive to take powers away from party leaders. Advantages of action: base wants repeal, big policy benefits (high-end tax cuts) Disadvantages: aca now more popular, taking benefits from people is hard, real risk of destabilizing insurance markets.
