Policy types shape politics and institutions.
Lowi's 1964 typology of distributive, regulatory and redistributive policy. Its claim is that policy determines politics rather than the reverse, which inverts the usual causal story.
In practice
- A distributive policy creates grateful beneficiaries and no organised opposition; a redistributive one creates both, and the politics differ in kind.
- A regulation that affects one industry produces an industry lobby; one that affects everyone slightly produces nothing.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works