Book Details

The Structure of Policy Change

By DEREK A. EPP (Author)

Price : ~~$30.00~~  $24.00
ISBN : 9780226529721
Page : 208
Year of Publication : 2018    Edition : 0
Publisher : UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Subject : PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

mediamatics

Description :

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the Red Scare seized the American public. While President Eisenhower cautioned restraint, his hand was forced, and NASA’s budget had increased five thousand percent over its pre-Sputnik levels by the time President Kennedy proposed landing a man on the moon. Spending on the space race is in no way unique; Almost every policy area has its own Sputnik-type story, where waves of popular support for an idea (or disillusionment with a previous one) created new political priorities, resulting in dramatic changes to the budget or compelling agencies to respond quickly with little knowledge or preparation. Is this instability an inherent feature of the policy process, or is it possible for an agency to deal with problems in a way that insulates it from swings in public opinion and thus imposes some stability on the decision making process?

Derek A. Epp is assistant professor of political science in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

Content :

Part I : Punctuations in Public Policies

1 The Rise and Fall of NASA’s Budget and Other Instabilities

2 A Macroscopic View of the Policy Process

3 Complexity, Capacity, and Collective Decisions

4 Distributional Assessments of Institutional Response

Part II : Issue Complexity and Institutional Capacity

5 Instabilities in Federal Policy Making

6 Institutional Capacity in the American States

Part III : Politics and Collective Intelligence

7 Decision-Making Pathologies

8 Revisiting the Efficiency of the Private Sector

9 Designing Responsive Institutions