Getting To Know The Government

Henry Farrell reviews Suzanne Mettler's book-length exposition of her "submerged state" argument:

This is a theory of politics … under which the key problem is that Americans don’t understand the consequences of policies, and politicians and interest groups have systematic interests in obscuring them. … It’s clear that Mettler is a lefty – she is betting that if people understood these expenditures better they would be persuaded that the state can do a lot of good (and would also be better placed to push for reform where appropriate). But one could also imagine democratically inclined libertarians being in favor of a de-obscuring of the operations of government, both because it is appropriate in its own right, and because they are willing to make the opposite bet.