[PDF] Turmoil In American Public Policy eBook

Author : Leslie R. Alm
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 19,8 MB
Release : 2010-04-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0313385378

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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 : Dara Z. Strolovitch
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 41,35 MB
Release : 2023-07-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 022679881X

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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 : Amy E. Lerman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 47,95 MB
Release : 2019-06-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 022663020X

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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 : Vincent Ostrom
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 30,74 MB
Release : 1989
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0817304185

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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 : Francis Paul Prucha
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 683 pages
File Size : 37,38 MB
Release : 2014-04-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0806146427

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In this book a distinguished authority in the field presents an account of United States Indian policy in the years 1865 to 1900, one of the most critical periods in Indian-white relations. Francis Paul Prucha discusses in detail the major developments of those years—Grant's Peace Policy, the reservation system, the agitation for transfer of Indian affairs to military control, the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act), Indian citizenship, Indian education, Civil Service reform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the dissolution of the Indian nations of the Indian Territory. American Indian Policy in Crisis focuses on the Christian humanitarians and philanthropists who were the ultimate driving force in the "reform" of Indian affairs. The programs of these men and women to individualize and Americanize the Indians and turn them into patriotic American citizens indistinguishable from their white neighbors are examined at length. The story is not a pretty one, for reformers' changes were often disastrous for the Indians, and yet it is a tremendously important work for understanding the Indians’ situation and their place in American society today. Prucha does not treat Indian policy in isolation but relates it to the dominant cultural and intellectual currents of the age. This book furnishes a view of the evangelical Christian influence on American policy and the reforming spirit it engendered, both of which have a significance extending beyond Indian policy alone. Thorough documentation and an excellent bibliography enhance its value.

Author : G. John Ikenberry
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 43,28 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Law
ISBN : 0691139695

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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 : Jeanne Sheehan
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 29,56 MB
Release : 2021-01-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 3030622819

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Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges—everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more—the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It’s the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. This book explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers “upstream,” stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive.

Author : CQ Researcher,
Publisher : CQ Press
Page : 1064 pages
File Size : 22,35 MB
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1544369247

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Written by award-winning CQ Researcher journalists, this annual collection of nonpartisan and thoroughly researched reports focuses on 16 hot-button policy issues. With reports ranging from racial profiling to prescription drug costs, the Twentieth Edition of Issues for Debate in American Public Policy promotes in-depth discussion, facilitates further research, and helps readers formulate their own positions on crucial policy issues. And because it is CQ Researcher, the policy reports are expertly researched and written, showing readers all sides of an issue. Because this annual volume comes together just months before publication, all selections are brand new and explore some of today’s most significant American public policy issues, including: racial profiling, populism and party politics, student debt, the gig economy, the future of the coal industry, prescription drug costs, and much more!

Author : Freedom House
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 1265 pages
File Size : 21,95 MB
Release : 2019-01-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1538112035

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Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.