Description

Kingdon’s landmark work on agenda setting and policy formation is drawn from interview conducted with people in and around the U.S. federal government, and from case studies, government documents, party platforms, press coverage, and public opinion surveys. While other works examine how policy issues are decided, Kingdon’s book was the first to consider how issues got to be issues. This enduring work attempts to answer the questions: How do subjects come to officials’ attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an idea’s time come when it does?

Longman is proud to announce that Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies has been reissued in this Longman Classics edition, featuring a new epilogue: Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama. Comparing the Clinton administration in 1993 with the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010, Kingdon analyses how agenda setting, actors, and alternatives affect public policy.

Features

• A unique approach to agenda setting shows students not only how policy issues are decided but how issues get on the agenda.
• 'Some Further Reflections' builds on Kingdon's original work to see how his methods and conclusions have stood up over time and to and to include more case studies: The Reagan Budget in 1981, The Tax Reform Act of 1986, and Health Care Reform during the Clinton Administration in 1993.
• The New Epilogue, 'Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama', applies the text’s framework of problems, policies, and politics to analyze the complex process of reform.
• The 'Appendix on Methods' explains the research choices the author made and helps students understand how he analyzed the data he compiled to reach meaningful conclusions.

New to this Edition

This edition features a new epilogue, 'Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama,' to improve understanding of agenda setting, policy formation, and the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010.

'Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama,' builds on, reinforces, and expands on Kingdon’s classic work by:

1. Applying the text’s framework of problems, policies, and politics to analyze the complex process of reform.
2. Comparing the Clinton and Obama administrations’ approaches to health care reform by building on the case study of the 1993 attempt in Chapter 10.
3. Demonstrating how the recession opened a policy window for the Obama administration.
4. Discussing how consensus was built on key areas of legislation to enable a more focused debate.
5. Explaining how powerful interest groups were persuaded to support health care reform.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1. How Does an Idea’s Time Come?

 

CHAPTER 2. Participants on the Inside of Government

 

CHAPTER 3. Outside of Government, but Not Just Looking In

 

CHAPTER 4. Processes: Origins, Rationality, Incrementalism, and Garbage Cans

 

CHAPTER 5. Problems

 

CHAPTER 6. The Policy Primeval Soup

 

CHAPTER 7. The Political Stream

 

CHAPTER 8. The Policy Window, and Joining the Streams

 

CHAPTER 9. Wrapping Things Up

 

CHAPTER 10. Some Further Reflections

 

EPILOGUE.  Health Care Reform in the Clinton and Obama Administrations