The task of deliberating public policy falls preeminently to Congress. But decisions on matters ranging from budget deficits to the war with Iraq, among others, raise serious doubts about its performance.  In Deliberative Choices, Gary Mucciaroni and Paul J. Quirk assess congressional deliberation by analyzing debate on the House and Senate floors.  Does debate genuinely inform members of Congress and the public?  Or does it mostly mislead and manipulate them? 

Mucciaroni and Quirk argue that in fashioning the claims they use in debate, legislators make a strategic trade-off between boosting their rhetorical force and ensuring their ability to withstand scrutiny. Using three case studies—welfare reform, repeal of the estate tax, and telecommunications deregulation—the authors show how legislators’ varying responses to such a trade-off shape the issues they focus on, the claims they make, and the information they provide in support of those claims. 

Mucciaroni and Quirk conclude that congressional debate generally is only moderately realistic and informed. It often trades in half-truths, omissions, and sometimes even outright falsehoods. Yet some debates are highly informative.  Moreover, the authors believe it’s possible to improve congressional deliberation, and they recommend reforms designed to do so.

Democracy enjoys unparalleled prestige at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a form of government. Some of the world's most prosperous nations are democracies, and an array of nations in Europe, Africa, and South America have adopted the system. This globalization has also met resistance and provoked concerns about international power exerted by institutions and elites that are beyond the control of existing democratic institutions. In this volume, leading scholars of democracy engage the key questions about how far and how fast democracy can spread, and how international agencies and international cooperation uneasily affect national democracies. At first glance, the efforts of intergovernmental organizations to intervene in a nation's governance seem anything but democratic to that nation. The contributors demonstrate why democracy has been so attractive and so successful, but are also candid about what limits it may reach, and why.

Contributors are Lisa Anderson, Larry Diamond, Zachary Elkins, John R. Freeman, Brian J. Gaines, James H. Kuklinski, Peter F. Nardulli, Melissa A. Orlie, Buddy Peyton, Paul J. Quirk, Wendy Rahn, Bruce Russett, and Beth Simmons.