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Author: Leslie R. Alm
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313385378
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
This book explores the intricacies of the science-policy linkage that pervades environmental policymaking in a democracy. These are the key questions that this primary textbook for courses on American public policymaking and environmental policymaking addresses and attempts to answer. Turmoil in American Public Policy: Science, Democracy, and the Environment first lays out the basics of the policymaking process in the United States in relation to the substantive issues of environmental policymaking. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, the authors highlight the views and experiences of scientists, especially natural scientists, in their interactions with policymakers and their efforts to harness the findings of their science to rational public policy. The proper role of science and scientists in relation to environmental policymaking hinges on fundamental questions at the intersection of political philosophy and scientific epistemology. How can the experimental nature of the scientific method and the probabilistic expression of scientific results be squared with the normative language of legislation and regulation? If scientists undertake to square the circle by hardening the tentative truths of their scientific models into positive truths to underpin public policy, at what point may they be judged to have exceeded the proper limits of scientific knowledge, relinquished their role as impartial experts, and become partisan advocates demanding too much say in a democratic setting? Providing students—and secondarily policymakers, scientists, and citizen activists—a theoretical and practical knowledge of the means availed by modern American democracy for resolving this tension is the object of this progressively structured textbook.
Author: Leslie R. Alm
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313385378
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book explores the intricacies of the science-policy linkage that pervades environmental policymaking in a democracy. These are the key questions that this primary textbook for courses on American public policymaking and environmental policymaking addresses and attempts to answer. Turmoil in American Public Policy: Science, Democracy, and the Environment first lays out the basics of the policymaking process in the United States in relation to the substantive issues of environmental policymaking. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, the authors highlight the views and experiences of scientists, especially natural scientists, in their interactions with policymakers and their efforts to harness the findings of their science to rational public policy. The proper role of science and scientists in relation to environmental policymaking hinges on fundamental questions at the intersection of political philosophy and scientific epistemology. How can the experimental nature of the scientific method and the probabilistic expression of scientific results be squared with the normative language of legislation and regulation? If scientists undertake to square the circle by hardening the tentative truths of their scientific models into positive truths to underpin public policy, at what point may they be judged to have exceeded the proper limits of scientific knowledge, relinquished their role as impartial experts, and become partisan advocates demanding too much say in a democratic setting? Providing students—and secondarily policymakers, scientists, and citizen activists—a theoretical and practical knowledge of the means availed by modern American democracy for resolving this tension is the object of this progressively structured textbook.
Author: Amy E. Lerman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022663020X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
American government is in the midst of a reputation crisis. An overwhelming majority of citizens—Republicans and Democrats alike—hold negative perceptions of the government and believe it is wasteful, inefficient, and doing a generally poor job managing public programs and providing public services. When social problems arise, Americans are therefore skeptical that the government has the ability to respond effectively. It’s a serious problem, argues Amy E. Lerman, and it will not be a simple one to fix. With Good Enough for Government Work, Lerman uses surveys, experiments, and public opinion data to argue persuasively that the reputation of government is itself an impediment to government’s ability to achieve the common good. In addition to improving its efficiency and effectiveness, government therefore has an equally critical task: countering the belief that the public sector is mired in incompetence. Lerman takes readers through the main challenges. Negative perceptions are highly resistant to change, she shows, because we tend to perceive the world in a way that confirms our negative stereotypes of government—even in the face of new information. Those who hold particularly negative perceptions also begin to “opt out” in favor of private alternatives, such as sending their children to private schools, living in gated communities, and refusing to participate in public health insurance programs. When sufficient numbers of people opt out of public services, the result can be a decline in the objective quality of public provision. In this way, citizens’ beliefs about government can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with consequences for all. Lerman concludes with practical solutions for how the government might improve its reputation and roll back current efforts to eliminate or privatize even some of the most critical public services.
Author: Dara Z. Strolovitch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679881X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the Coronavirus crisis, the language of crisis is everywhere around us and ubiquitous in contemporary American politics and policymaking. But for every problem that political actors describe as a crisis, there are myriad other equally serious ones that are not described in this way. Why has the term crisis been associated with some problems but not others? What has crisis come to mean, and what work does it do? In When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People, Dara Z. Strolovitch brings a critical eye to the taken-for-granted political vernacular of crisis. Using systematic analyses to trace the evolution of the use of the term crisis by both political elites and outsiders, Strolovitch unpacks the idea of “crisis” in contemporary politics and demonstrates that crisis is itself an operation of politics. She shows that racial justice activists innovated the language of crisis in an effort to transform racism from something understood as natural and intractable and to cast it instead as a policy problem that could be remedied. Dominant political actors later seized on the language of crisis to compel the use of state power, but often in ways that compounded rather than alleviated inequality and injustice. In this eye-opening and important book, Strolovitch demonstrates that understanding crisis politics is key to understanding the politics of racial, gender, and class inequalities in the early twenty-first century.
Author: Sylvia Walby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150950320X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.
Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691139695
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
Was George W. Bush the true heir of Woodrow Wilson, the architect of liberal internationalism? Was the Iraq War a result of liberal ideas about America's right to promote democracy abroad? In this timely book, four distinguished scholars of American foreign policy discuss the relationship between the ideals of Woodrow Wilson and those of George W. Bush. The Crisis of American Foreign Policy exposes the challenges resulting from Bush's foreign policy and ponders America's place in the international arena. Led by John Ikenberry, one of today's foremost foreign policy thinkers, this provocative collection examines the traditions of liberal internationalism that have dominated American foreign policy since the end of World War II. Tony Smith argues that Bush and the neoconservatives followed Wilson in their commitment to promoting democracy abroad. Thomas Knock and Anne-Marie Slaughter disagree and contend that Wilson focused on the building of a collaborative and rule-centered world order, an idea the Bush administration actively resisted. The authors ask if the United States is still capable of leading a cooperative effort to handle the pressing issues of the new century, or if the country will have to go it alone, pursuing policies without regard to the interests of other governments. Addressing current events in the context of historical policies, this book considers America's position on the global stage and what future directions might be possible for the nation in the post-Bush era.
Author: Marc J. Hetherington
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022629935X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Polarization is at an all-time high in the United States. But contrary to popular belief, Americans are polarized not so much in their policy preferences as in their feelings toward their political opponents: To an unprecedented degree, Republicans and Democrats simply do not like one another. No surprise that these deeply held negative feelings are central to the recent (also unprecedented) plunge in congressional productivity. The past three Congresses have gotten less done than any since scholars began measuring congressional productivity. In Why Washington Won’t Work, Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph argue that a contemporary crisis of trust—people whose party is out of power have almost no trust in a government run by the other side—has deadlocked Congress. On most issues, party leaders can convince their own party to support their positions. In order to pass legislation, however, they must also create consensus by persuading some portion of the opposing party to trust in their vision for the future. Without trust, consensus fails to develop and compromise does not occur. Up until recently, such trust could still usually be found among the opposition, but not anymore. Political trust, the authors show, is far from a stable characteristic. It’s actually highly variable and contingent on a variety of factors, including whether one’s party is in control, which part of the government one is dealing with, and which policies or events are most salient at the moment. Political trust increases, for example, when the public is concerned with foreign policy—as in times of war—and it decreases in periods of weak economic performance. Hetherington and Rudolph do offer some suggestions about steps politicians and the public might take to increase political trust. Ultimately, however, they conclude that it is unlikely levels of political trust will significantly increase unless foreign concerns come to dominate and the economy is consistently strong.
Author: David Davenport
Publisher: Hoover Press
ISBN: 0817922660
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is widely understood as a turning point in American history. Roosevelt's decisions of 1933 reset the balance of power away from Congress and the states toward a strong executive branch. They shifted the federal government away from the Founders' vision of deliberation and moderation toward war and action. Modern-day presidents have declared war on everything from poverty and drugs to crime and terror. Exploring the consequences of these ill-defined (and never-ending) wars, this book calls for a re-examination of this destructive approach to governance.
Author: Vincent Ostrom
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817304185
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
This revised and expanded third edition extends Ostrom's analysis to account for the most resent developments in American politics, including those of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Author: Cary Coglianese
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207491
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis—not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. At the same time, critics on the right disparage an excessively strict and costly regulatory system for hampering economic recovery. With such polarized accounts of regulation and its performance, the nation needs now more than ever the kind of dispassionate, rigorous scholarship found in this book. With chapters written by some of the nation's foremost economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, Regulatory Breakdown brings clarity to the heated debate over regulation by dissecting the disparate causes of the current crisis as well as analyzing promising solutions to what ails the U.S. regulatory system. This volume shows policymakers, researchers, and the public why they need to question conventional wisdom about regulation—whether from the left or the right—and demonstrates the value of undertaking systematic analysis before adopting policy reforms in the wake of disaster.
Author: James Gustave Speth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300184689
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
In this third volume of his award-winning American Crisis series, James Gustave Speth makes his boldest and most ambitious contribution yet. He looks unsparingly at the sea of troubles in which the United States now finds itself, charts a course through the discouragement and despair commonly felt today, and envisions what he calls America the Possible, an attractive and plausible future that we can still realize. The book identifies a dozen features of the American political economy--the country's basic operating system--where transformative change is essential. It spells out the specific changes that are needed to move toward a new political economy--one in which the true priority is to sustain people and planet. Supported by a compelling "theory of change" that explains how system change can come to America, the book also presents a vision of political, social, and economic life in a renewed America. Speth envisions a future that will be well worth fighting for. In short, this is a book about the American future and the strong possibility that we yet have it in ourselves to use our freedom and our democracy in powerful ways to create something fine, a reborn America, for our children and grandchildren.
