Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies

by Nils Karlson

This book explains how advanced democracies and welfare states can achieve welfare-enhancing, liberal institutional reform. It develops a general theory based on an extended comparative case study of Sweden and Australia over the last 25 years, and offers an in-depth contribution to the field of institutional change, explaining how to govern a country well and how to overcome different barriers to reform, such as special interests, negativity biases and media logic. It develops the concepts of the ‘reform cycle’, ‘reform strategies’ and ‘polycentric experiential’ learning in order to explain successful reforms, and the key role of policy entrepreneurs, who introduce and develop new ideas. The book further examines why these reforms came to an end. Karlson also applies the ideas of Popperian, Kuhnian and Machiavellian reform strategies, and explains why they are needed for reform to come about. The theory of modern statecraft presented here involves a combination of knowing w hat and knowing how. It has the potential to be generally applicable in any advanced democracy with the ambition to improve its economy and society. This book is of interest for anyone who is concerned about budget deficits, slow growth, over regulation, lack of structural reforms and the rise of populism. It will appeal to scholars of political science, public policy and political economy.

204 pages, Hardcover

Published September 20, 2017

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read on how political reform actually occurs. It's a bit dry, but that's mainly due to the subject matter and the rigor the author uses in his analysis. The essence of Karlson's argument is that reform in advanced democracies requires knowing both what to reform and how to go about doing so. Typically the impetus for reform comes from noticing how society is failing in some way which prompts policy entrepreneurs to propose potential solutions. Karlson only focuses on what he calls liberal reforms. Karlson uses the term liberal in a different sense than we use it in the US. To him liberal largely means free-market capitalism, so it is similar to libertarianism, but without libertarianism's social reforms.

Karlson argues that once the policy failures are identified and reforms are proposed, policy makers must choose from three different strategies to push their reforms through. He calls these strategies, Kuhnian, Popperian, and Machiavellian. The Kuhnian strategy tries to shift the debate to view the reform in a different light where it is obviously better than the status quo, the Popperian strategy uses research, reason, and debate to gain support for reform, and the Machiavellian strategy uses manipulation and deception to pass reforms that otherwise may not be political viable.

Anyone working on, or interested in, public policy will benefit from understanding this book.