Michael Cummings

Lowi offers a strong critique of why the long-prevailing U.S. system of Interest Group Liberalism (IGL) can govern neither efficiently nor justly. Legislators fear taking sides and alienating key interest groups, thus defaulting policy to bureaucrats who essentially rewrite laws to appease powerful interest groups. What he doesn't explain is why and how his preferred alternative of Juridical Democracy--in which politicians and legislators take clear positions on controversial issues and write unambiguous law--could ever come about. Given the causative history he offers of the evolution of self-serving American pluralism (Dahl's polyarchy), why would IGL suddenly morph into a transformative democracy that could rule with justice and efficiency? Why would its partisans finally decide to tell the truth to competing interest groups--and suffer the electoral consequences--instead of continuing to cover themselves with politically convenient ambiguity?