Values, Institutions and Policy Agendas

Abstract

Values are important in the context of any political system because they help to shape the institutions and the policy outputs of that system. In the United States the ideas of equality, democracy, self-government, individual liberty, localism, the protection of property and constitutionalism, as well as arguments over the definition of what is ‘truly American’, have together provided a core set of values to which reference can be made in political debate (Barone, 1990). These values are not necessarily compatible with each other and many of American public policy dilemmas continue to involve difficult clashes of values. Thus advocates of greater equality (which might be achieved through higher levels of governmental spending on welfare) have had to reckon with a political culture in which the idea of progressive taxation is much more suspect than in many European countries. Similarly, advocates of individual freedom have frequently found that the American political system for all its emphasis on constitutional protection afforded to minorities may offer little comfort to those individuals whose ideas offend the majority.