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Agendas and Instability in American Politics

In this innovative account of the way policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda — the first detailed study of so many issues over an extended period — Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones show that rapid change not only can but does happen in the hidebound institutions of government.

Short-term, single-issue analyses of public policy, the authors contend, give a narrow and distorted view of public policy as the result of a cozy arrangement between politicians, interest groups, and the media. Baumgartner and Jones upset these notions by focusing on several issues — including civilian nuclear power, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety — over a much longer period of time to reveal patterns of stability alternating with bursts of rapid, unpredictable change.

A welcome corrective to conventional political wisdom, Agendas and Instability revises our understanding of the dynamics of agenda-setting and clarifies a subject at the very center of the study of American politics.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 312
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780226039398
  • Genres
  • politics
  • Release date
  • 1993