The Politics of Policy Change

The Politics of Policy Change PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589018842
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
For generations, debating the expansion or contraction of the American welfare state has produced some of the nation's most heated legislative battles. Attempting social policy reform is both risky and complicated, especially when it involves dealing with powerful vested interests, sharp ideological disagreements, and a nervous public. The Politics of Policy Change compares and contrasts recent developments in three major federal policy areas in the United States: welfare, Medicare, and Social Security. Daniel Béland and Alex Waddan argue that we should pay close attention to the role of ideas when explaining the motivations for, and obstacles to, policy change. This insightful book concentrates on three cases of social policy reform (or attempted reform) that took place during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Béland and Waddan further employ their framework to help explain the meaning of the 2010 health insurance reform and other developments that have taken place during the Obama presidency. The result is a book that will improve our understanding of the politics of policy change in contemporary federal politics.

The Politics of Policy Change

The Politics of Policy Change PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589018842
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
For generations, debating the expansion or contraction of the American welfare state has produced some of the nation's most heated legislative battles. Attempting social policy reform is both risky and complicated, especially when it involves dealing with powerful vested interests, sharp ideological disagreements, and a nervous public. The Politics of Policy Change compares and contrasts recent developments in three major federal policy areas in the United States: welfare, Medicare, and Social Security. Daniel Béland and Alex Waddan argue that we should pay close attention to the role of ideas when explaining the motivations for, and obstacles to, policy change. This insightful book concentrates on three cases of social policy reform (or attempted reform) that took place during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Béland and Waddan further employ their framework to help explain the meaning of the 2010 health insurance reform and other developments that have taken place during the Obama presidency. The result is a book that will improve our understanding of the politics of policy change in contemporary federal politics.

The Politics of Policy Analysis

The Politics of Policy Analysis PDF Author: Paul Cairney
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030661229
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This book focuses on two key ways to improve the literature surrounding policy analysis. Firstly, it explores the implications of new developments in policy process research, on the role of psychology in communication and the multi-centric nature of policymaking. This is particularly important since policy analysts engage with policymakers who operate in an environment over which they have limited understanding and even less control. Secondly, it incorporates insights from studies of power, co-production, feminism, and decolonisation, to redraw the boundaries of policy-relevant knowledge. These insights help raise new questions and change expectations about the role and impact of policy analysis.

How Change Happens-- Or Doesn't

How Change Happens-- Or Doesn't PDF Author: Elaine Ciulla Kamarck
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
ISBN: 9781588269393
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
How do transformative changes in public policy take place? Why do some issues rise to the top of the political agenda, while others are completely ignored? What makes some major policy initiatives succeed--at times, even when the odds are decidedly against them--while others fail or languish for decades? Answering those questions is the purpose of this book. Elaine Kamarck traces the paths of a series of modern policy initiatives from the orderly world of analysis to the messy world of partisan politics.Dissecting the reasons for policy success and failure, she offers an intriguing new perspective on how change happens in the space where politics and policy overlap. --

Lobbying and Policy Change

Lobbying and Policy Change PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226039463
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
During the 2008 election season, politicians from both sides of the aisle promised to rid government of lobbyists’ undue influence. For the authors of Lobbying and Policy Change, the most extensive study ever done on the topic, these promises ring hollow—not because politicians fail to keep them but because lobbies are far less influential than political rhetoric suggests. Based on a comprehensive examination of ninety-eight issues, this volume demonstrates that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying. Why? The authors find that resources explain less than five percent of the difference between successful and unsuccessful efforts. Moreover, they show, these attempts must overcome an entrenched Washington system with a tremendous bias in favor of the status quo. Though elected officials and existing policies carry more weight, lobbies have an impact too, and when advocates for a given issue finally succeed, policy tends to change significantly. The authors argue, however, that the lobbying community so strongly reflects elite interests that it will not fundamentally alter the balance of power unless its makeup shifts dramatically in favor of average Americans’ concerns.

Governing Narratives

Governing Narratives PDF Author: Hugh T. Miller
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817317732
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
By highlighting the degree to which meaning making in public policy is more a cultural struggle than a rational and analytical project, Governing Narratives brings public administration back into a political context. In Governing Narratives, Hugh T. Miller takes a narrative approach in conceptualizing the politics of public policy. In this approach, signs and ideographs—that is, constellations of images, feelings, values, and conceptualization—are woven into policy narratives through the use of story lines. For example, the ideograph “acid rain” is part of an environmental narrative that links dead trees to industrial air pollution. The struggle for meaning capture is a political struggle, most in evidence during times of change or when status quo practices are questioned. Public policy is often considered to be the end result of empirical studies, quantitative analyses, and objective evaluation. But the empirical norms of science and rationality that have informed public policy research have also hidden from view those vexing aspects of public policy discourse outside of methodological rigor. Phrases such as “three strikes and you’re out” or “flood of immigrants” or “don’t ask, don’t tell” or “crack baby” or “the death tax” have come to play crucial roles in public policy, not because of the reality they are purported to reflect, but because the meanings, emotions, and imagery connoted by these symbolizations resonate in our culture. Social practices, the very material of social order and cultural stability, are inextricably linked to the policy discourse that accompanies social change. Eventually a winning narrative dominates and becomes institutionalized into practice and implemented via public administration. Policy is symbiotically associated with these winning narratives. Practices might change again, but this inevitably entails renewed political contestation. The competition among symbolizations does not imply that the best narrative wins, only that a narrative has won for the time being. However, unsettling the established narrative is a difficult political task, particularly when the narrative has evolved into habitual institutionalized practice. Governing Narratives convincingly links public policy to the discourse and rhetoric of deliberative politics.

Educational Policy and the Politics of Change

Educational Policy and the Politics of Change PDF Author: Miriam Henry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135098190
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Governments around the world are trying to come to terms with new technologies, new social movements and a changing global economy. As a result, educational policy finds itself at the centre of a major political struggle between those who see it only for its instrumental outcomes and those who see its potential for human emancipation. This book is a successor to the best-selling Understanding Schooling (1988). It provides a readable account of how educational policies are developed by the state in response to broader social, cultural, economic and political changes which are taking place. It examines the way in which schools live and work with these changes, and the policies which result from them. The book examines policy making at each level, from perspectives both inside and outside the state bureaucracy. It has a particular focus on social justice. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students will find that this book enables them to understand the reasoning behind the changes they are expected to implement. It will help to prepare them to confront an uncertain educational world, whilst still retaining their enthusiasm for education.

The Politics of Military Force

The Politics of Military Force PDF Author: Frank A Stengel
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472132210
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The Politics of Military Force examines the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally.

The Politics of Rights

The Politics of Rights PDF Author: Stuart A. Scheingold
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472025538
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Stuart A. Scheingold's landmark work introduced a new understanding of the contribution of rights to progressive social movements, and thirty years later it still stands as a pioneering and provocative work, bridging political science and sociolegal studies. In the preface to this new edition, the author provides a cogent analysis of the burgeoning scholarship that has been built on the foundations laid in his original volume. A new foreword from Malcolm Feeley of Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law traces the intellectual roots of The Politics of Rights to the classic texts of social theory and sociolegal studies. "Scheingold presents a clear, thoughtful discussion of the ways in which rights can both empower and constrain those seeking change in American society. While much of the writing on rights is abstract and obscure, The Politics of Rights stands out as an accessible and engaging discussion." -Gerald N. Rosenberg, University of Chicago "This book has already exerted an enormous influence on two generations of scholars. It has had an enormous influence on political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as historians and legal scholars. With this new edition, this influence is likely to continue for still more generations. The Politics of Rights has, I believe, become an American classic." -Malcolm Feeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, from the foreword Stuart A. Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington.

The Obama Presidency and the Politics of Change

The Obama Presidency and the Politics of Change PDF Author: Edward Ashbee
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319410334
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This edited volume considers the extent to which the Obama presidency matched the promises of hope and change that were held out in the 2008 election. Contributors assess the character of “change” and, within this context, survey the extent to which there was enduring change within particular policy areas, both domestic and foreign. The authors combine empirical detail with more speculative assessment of the limits and possibilities of change amidst a very dense institutional landscape and in an era of intense political polarization. Some see significant changes, the full consequences of which may only be evident in later years. Other authors in the collection present a markedly different picture and suggest that processes of change were not only limited and partial but at times leading the US in directions far removed from the promises of 2008. The book will make an important contribution to the debates about the Obama legacy.

Policy Dynamics

Policy Dynamics PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226039412
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
While governmental policies and institutions may remain more or less the same for years, they can also change suddenly and unpredictably in response to new political agendas and crises. What causes stability or change in the political system? What role do political institutions play in this process? To investigate these questions, Policy Dynamics draws on the most extensive data set yet compiled for public policy issues in the United States. Spanning the past half-century, these data make it possible to trace policies and legislation, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions over time and across institutions. Some chapters analyze particular policy areas, such as health care, national security, and immigration, while others focus on institutional questions such as congressional procedures and agendas and the differing responses by Congress and the Supreme Court to new issues. Policy Dynamics presents a radical vision of how the federal government evolves in response to new challenges-and the research tools that others may use to critique or extend that vision.