The need to downsize politics along with the public dollar

Numerous political ‘disillusioning events’ have contributed to what is now serious citizen distrust of the federal government. The deficit has exacerbated this citizen discontent, because failure to balance the books is perceived as a governance problem, and because the political forces driving many budgetary expenditures have lost much of their legitimacy. These forces are manifested in budgetary decision-making through four kinds of political demands – pork projects, pet projects, campaign fund inducements, and established programs. Meeting today's governance problems partly involves reforming how we deal with these four kinds of political demands. Downsizing the federal budget thus involves downsizing politics.