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Review of "America the Unusual"
By Aaron Steelman
Introduction
America the Unusual
John W. Kingdon
New York: Worth Publishers, 1999, 111 pp.
Scholars have long asked, "Why is America different?" John W. Kingdon, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who is best known for his work on the voting behavior of members of the U.S. Congress, is a relative newcomer to the issue. He enters the debate with America the Unusual, a thoughtful and readable book.
Kingdon ably and succinctly summarizes the relevant literature before offering his own explanation of why the public policies of the United States are different in basic ways from the public policies of other rich nations. "I don't want to go so far as to argue that the United States is utterly unique or exceptional. But I do think that America is very unusual among industrialized countries in many respects," he writes. "Other countries provide more government services, pay higher taxes, and have larger public sectors relative to their private sectors. There seem to be a few exceptions to that general picture, but mostly, those are the facts."
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