A variety of recent studies of American politics and public policy focuses on the role of entrepreneurs in the agenda-setting process. While the focus is quite often on the role of entrepreneurs as architects of policy change, or as sources of policy disequilibrium (Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 1993; Mark Schneider, Paul Teske and Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government, 1995; Adam D. Sheingate, “Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development,” Studies in American Political Development 17 [Fall 2003]: 185–203), entrepreneurs may also work to maintain policy equilibria through the maintenance of majority coalitions. (Although this might be the difference between entrepreneurial and leadership activity, the former is interested in assembling a coalition to challenge the policy status quo, while the latter focuses on coalition maintenance in support of the status quo.) Whether they are engaged in “creative acts of destruction” (Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942) or are attempting to maintain a policy equilibrium, a major factor shaping the decision to pursue entrepreneurial activity, as well as the chances of success of such efforts, is the perceived costs associated with assembling a winning coalition. Successful entrepreneurs are those who are able to overcome the collective-action problem associated with coalition maintenance.

Diana Evans's new book picks up this line of research, focusing on how “policy coalition leaders”—primarily committee and subcommittee chairs and the president—use distributive goods, or pork, to assemble winning coalitions in support of general-interest legislation. Evans suggests that the concern with reelection creates a Congress in which the members are preoccupied with constituent service, and bringing home distributive projects in particular, thus presenting authors of general-interest legislation with a variation of the collective-action dilemma. As such, success in assembling a winning coalition is determined by the ability of legislative entrepreneurs to attach pork to their general-interest project.

Evans develops a vote-buying model and uses it to examine a coalition-building strategy that occurs under four conditions: Entrepreneurs “must have access to sufficient distributive benefits” so that they can effect a trade; entrepreneurs must be willing to use a vote-buying strategy; legislators must be willing to sell votes and see doing so as necessary to their reelection; and the actual target of passage is general-interest legislation (p. 31). In the end, these conditions narrow both the subject of her study and the impact of her findings. Even so, what she does accomplish is impressive and should make Greasing the Wheels of interest to students of Congress and public policy. Through a combination of interviews and quantitative analysis, Evans provides evidence that vote buying occurs, and that it can be used to bring in the final votes necessary to ensure the passage of legislation. Where she is not as convincing is in demonstrating that vote buying is being used to pass general-interest legislation, that is, that pork serves a “higher” purpose.

My primary complaint is with the definition or conceptualization of “general-interest” legislation as “broad based measures that affect the whole nation or a large segment of it” and provide a “collective benefit” (p. 3). I am not convinced that the definition itself gets at the real subject of interest (nondistributive policy), nor am I convinced that the legislation studied fits that definition (the 55 mph speed limit is the exception). The highway reauthorization bills and the NAFTA agreement are simply bundles of distributive goodies packed around the rhetoric of national need. I confess, part of my discomfort has to do with the definition of general-interest legislation. If such a category is useful, it should include regulatory policy, at least some redistributive policies, and most of what Theodore Lowi labeled constituent policy. While the original legislation that created the federal highway system may once have fit the criteria, by the time of Evan's study, it looks like a classic collection of pork.

The definitional problem arises in part from the decision to exclude some policy areas and committees. The author mentions international relations and judiciary as examples, because legislators working in those realms have less opportunity to distribute pork (p. 31). Yet if the purpose of the study is to examine how general-interest bills are often passed with the addition of pork, then committees that deal with issues that provide fewer such opportunities, as well as policy with a nondistributive bent as a matter of course, would seem to be the ideal subject of study. Instead, she limits her study to what is at its heart a distributive policy domain and bills that meet the fourth condition within that domain. While this is an acceptable strategy, I am not convinced that the highway reauthorization bills that are at the heart of her study of the House (Chapters 3 and 4) or the NAFTA case of presidential bargaining (Chapter 5) fit the criteria of general interest.

Do not get me wrong; this is a valuable study of how pork is used to pass legislation and maintain policy coalitions. And the discussion of the efforts to protect the 55 mph speed limit demonstrates how a regulatory policy concern is transformed into a distributive policy giveaway in order to maintain majority support (and hints at what might be a widespread phenomenon that involves more than the distributive policy realms examined in the study). The lesson is clear: Policy entrepreneurs who want to assemble a winning coalition in favor of contested regulatory policy would be wise to provide the opportunity for some members to transform the debate into distributive terms, which is accomplished by offering distributive benefits. This opens the possibility that entrepreneurs who seek to peel off members of a majority coalition may try to transform the argument into nondistributive or ideological terms. Similarly, Evans uncovers another interesting facet of the collective-action dilemma in her study of the highway reauthorization bills and NAFTA. The provision of selective benefits to aid in the passage of legislation at one point in time creates a taste for such benefits in all future negotiations.

This book is full of such keen observations and insights—and I have completely neglected the excellent chapter on earmarks in the Senate. While in my mind it is more focused on how coalition leaders go about adding the last few votes to distributive policy packages than it is on the mechanics of passing “general interest” legislation, it stands as an important and interesting study that adds to our understanding of Congress, policy entrepreneurs, and coalition formation.