The institutional design of American government is unusually complicated. It invites efforts at reform, intended to broaden its representative capacity, increase responsiveness, deal with unanticipated problems that arise, and improve governability. This broad and conflictual tradition (“reform” means many things depending on who is doing the advocating) is what Bruce E. Cain concentrates on in an effort to impose a degree of order and understanding. It is his contention that efforts to increase popular democracy can be misguided. He argues that reform pluralism, relying on intermediate agents of representation and complemented by populist democratic initiatives, best serves the nation’s interests.

The author divides reform into three principal categories: populism, pluralism and apoliticism. He argues that reform efforts in this county have primarily emphasized populism to what he sees as the neglect of pluralist principles. His concern is to rethink and reapply each in a blended form of accommodation to different sets of institutional problems. To be clear: the primary emphasis is placed on a pluralist presence in decision-making as essential to governance in a complex and quickly changing nation.

Populism is the more-democracy answer to the nation’s ills. It can be described as a broad set of proposals intended to maximize direct popular sovereignty through increased power to monitor, control and participate in all levels of political decisionmaking. Delegated authority, rooted in Madisonian thought and favored by the Framers, is suspect and to be minimized. Faith is placed in the citizens’ capacity to conduct their own affairs. Examples of populism include calls for more elections, increased citizen control over and monitoring of policy processes and greater transparency in government operations. The emphasis is placed on democratic values of fairness, openness and majority rule.

The essential problem with the approach is that it overestimates the citizens’ capacity—interest, motivation, and knowledge—for the tasks of governing. The mass has other concerns. While voting is the act that sets democracies apart from other forms of state organization, it is a blunt weapon that on close examination manifests all the shortcomings that a reliance on participatory decisionmaking is subject to. While it must be part of the governing process, and I would say it is the most crucial element, it cannot carry the full load.

The second reform stream is pluralism, described as a reliance on political parties, interest groups and the media as intermediaries acting on behalf of the citizenry as a whole to assume the balance of monitoring, control and decisionmaking functions. Cain argues that pluralism is inevitable in a democracy of any size; it is embedded in the Constitution; it constitutes the only truly workable alternative; and “intermediaries can almost perfectly substitute for full citizen engagement and this virtual representation will not result in democratic distortion” (p. 25).

This is a strong endorsement, but the last point in particular comes up short. It might be enough to say that a degree of distortion is generally acceptable and manageable in order to achieve the level of informed governability a nation requires to sustain itself. This by itself raises questions that would need to be explored.

There are limits to the approach. The present dominance of a form of pluralism makes clear its weaknesses in representing the public interest. The responsiveness of government agencies and policymakers as well as the presidential selection processes and campaign operations to resource-heavy groups and individuals appears greater now than at any point in memory. It would seem that E.E. Schattschneider’s (1960) conception of politics dominated by a heavenly choir of the well-off is ever more accurate.

This is where Cain’s approach departs substantially from previous advocates’ assessments and most notably those of David Truman (The Governmental Process, 1951), Earl Latham (The Group Basis of Politics, 1952) and others familiar from the heyday of the debate over interest group liberalism. He is well aware of the fault lines of classical theorizing. He puts forward reform proposals of his own that could resurrect a commitment to a greater pluralist reliance in political representation and a more effective government responsiveness in meeting citizens’ needs. It is a distinctive, modified form of pluralism that Cain advocates as a primary emphasis in the book.

He proposes a number of standards that, if adopted, would better serve both the pluralist commitment to more effective governance and democratic concerns with accountability and fair representation. These include: recognizing electoral accountability, in itself a redefinition of interest group policymaking; supplementing and strengthening representative government; emphasizing more transparency pre- or post- process while allowing sufficient independent space for officials to act; fair contestation at all levels of policymaking and implementation; increasing negotiating capabilities and importance among all categories of intermediaries, as opposed to relying on public officials solely; and, one of the author’s principal concerns, balancing procedural democracy and the needs of governance.

Clearly such commitments, if enacted, would reframe the conduct of public business as well as align pluralist interests and principles of behavior more with basic democratic values. At the same time, the operational criteria presented are broad and the incentive to enact and/or abide by them is unclear. They can be held out as worthy objectives to be sought, as they are here, in themselves providing guidelines for reform efforts.

A conception of government that includes intermediary representation is inevitable, whatever its strengths or inadequacies. A rethinking of how pluralism might better accommodate the democratic initiative as discussed by Cain can only be welcomed.

The third reform strain Cain discusses, apoliticism, is the weakest in terms of accommodating a democratic value structure. Arguments in favor of this option focus more on a need for expertise and the facilitation of governance. Apoliticalism is intended to move aspects of government from the political arena to one of “neutral expertise.” It can be found primarily in administrative, regulatory and judicial areas. There then is a conscious effort to remove selective areas from democratic accountability and control, a decision not to be taken lightly. Taken to extremes-the Supreme Court can serve as an example-it can be corrosive of democratic processes to the point of moving the state into territory it was created to avoid. However, under certain conditions (civil service, IRS, EPA), it may actually serve the public interest as a reform option.

With the conceptual superstructure in place, a number of topical areas are identified for intensive development. These deal with efforts to achieve greater transparency in public affairs; the inherent paradoxes in participation-based politics; and reform cycles or the response of reform efforts at different periods of time. The extraordinary constitutional barriers to fundamental institutional change at the national level has encouraged the concentration of such efforts at the state and local levels. District-based electoral lives, voting rules set by states and local jurisdictions, term limits, nonpartisan elections, accommodation to the emergence of new groups to the franchise and so on, serve as examples of this trend.

Reform cycles are defined as repetitive patterns of adoption and rejection, traceable shifts in coalitional power and a basic ambivalence as to the applicability or meaning of democratic principles. In itself, the identification of reform cycles by historic era and targets of opportunity provides a level of structure and coherence to the study of reform movements. This has the potential to lead to greater theorizing in an area of inquiry where its absence is notable.

Cain concludes with an argument for what he refers to as “a blended reform agenda.” Rather than sole reliance on public officials in decisionmaking, it would emphasize mobilizing coalitions of interests. The coalitions would shift with the issue in question, and the objective would be to move beyond conceptions of permanent winners and losers or single-group dominance of government actions. These objectives are ambitious but difficult to argue with. To begin to achieve them, the author puts forward a pluralist reform agenda. He emphasizes protecting the vote; incentivizing multi-group competition to fight corruption; limiting and balancing transparency; restricting the number and frequency of elections; discouraging direct democracy initiatives; and equalizing access to political resources. All of these reforms are intended to strengthen a pluralistic mediated representative government. The intent is not to deny the democratic imperative, but to harness it in a manner that increases the effectiveness of a pluralistic approach.

In the author’s words, “… the quest for political reform can never be completed—it is an organic process that responds to changing standards and new circumstances. … Citizens should be drawn into greater involvement and participation in government but in a way that recognizes the limits of what they can and cannot do. The challenge is not to deny the democratic imperative, but to incorporate it into the pluralist framework of American political institutions” (p. 216). Cain has provided a fascinating roadmap to American government, its strengths and weaknesses, and how its operations might, or should, be improved. In this regard he has performed a public service at a level of knowledge, understanding, and intellectual sophistication that few can match.