Congress and Civil Rights Policy: An Examination of Endogenous Preferences
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Description
In economics the fundamental methodological starting point is to look for explanation in structure rather than in preferences. Thus in partial equilibrium theories, economists examine comparative statics propositions—descriptions of shifting choices as wealth, prices, or technology change, holding preferences constant. The reason for starting with these parameters is not that preferences are unimportant for the explanation—the overall choice pattern will depend on preferences, after all. But many have argued (or assumed) that not much can be said as to how preferences are likely to change during processes of choice. We think this view is overdrawn. We believe that many important preference change phenomena might be approached with standard analytical tools or minor variants thereof. Indeed, we believe that there is already more explicated preference formation within standard models and descriptions than is commonly recognized. We also believe that models with endogenous preferences might best be approached incrementally from within established modeling and descriptive traditions. Here we attempt such an analysis by examining the dramatic political changes associated with the passage and support for civil rights legislation beginning in the late 1950s. Previous explanations and descriptions of these events implicitly take account of changing popular and legislative preferences, thus this seems a fertile area to begin an analysis of preference change. We try to account for the different reasons legislators update their beliefs inducing new public policy preferences, and compare this account with a simple electoral change model of induced preferences in which legislator preferences—and thus public policy—shift merely through replacement.
Source Publication
Preferences and Situations: Points of Intersection Between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism
Source Editors/Authors
Ira Katznelson, Barry R. Weingast
Publication Date
2005
Recommended Citation
Brady, David W.; Ferejohn, John A.; and Pope, Jeremy C., "Congress and Civil Rights Policy: An Examination of Endogenous Preferences" (2005). Faculty Chapters. 538.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/538
