Cloth: 978-0-226-03947-3 | Paper: 978-0-226-03949-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-03953-4
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039534.001.0001
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States.
The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bryan D. Jones is the J. J. Pickle Chair in Congressional Studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Frank R. Baumgartner is Miller-LaVigne Professor of Political Science at Penn State University. They are the coauthors of several books, including The Politics of Attention, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Part One: Theoretical Beginnings
1 Punctuated Equilibria in Politics
2 Policy Images and Institutional Venues
3 Studying Agenda Change
Part Two: Tracing Policy Change in America
4 The Construction and Collapse of a Policy Monopoly
5 Two Models of Issue Expansion
6 The Dynamics of Media Attention
7 Cities as a National Political Problem
8 Connecting Solutions to Problems: Three Valence Issues
Part Three: Structural and Contextual Change in Politics
9 Interest Groups and Agenda-Setting
10 Congress as a Jurisdictional Battlefi eld
11 Federalism as a System of Policy Venues
12 Governing through Institutional Disruption
Part Four: Agendas and Instability, Fifteen Years Later
13 Policy Subsystems, Puncuated Equilibrium, and Theories of Policy Change
14 Punctuated Equilibrium and Disruptive Dynamics
Appendix A: Data Sources
Appendix B: Regression Analysis of Agenda Dynamics
References
Index