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The Political Power of Bad Ideas - Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R1,288
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The Political Power of Bad Ideas - Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave (Hardcover, New)
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In The Political Power of Bad Ideas, Mark Schrad uses one of the
greatest oddities of modern history--the broad diffusion throughout
the Western world of alcohol-control legislation in the early
twentieth century--to make a powerful argument about how bad policy
ideas achieve international success. His could an idea that was
widely recognized by experts as bad before adoption, and which
ultimately failed everywhere, come to be adopted throughout the
world? To answer the question, Schrad utilizes an institutionalist
approach and focuses in particular on the United States, Sweden,
and Russia/the USSR.
Conventional wisdom, based largely on the U.S. experience, blames
evangelical zealots for the success of the temperance movement. Yet
as Schrad shows, ten countries, along with numerous colonial
possessions, enacted prohibition laws. In virtually every case, the
consequences were disastrous, and in every country the law was
ultimately repealed. Schrad concentrates on the dynamic interaction
of ideas and political institutions, tracing the process through
which concepts of dubious merit gain momentum and achieve
credibility as they wend their way through institutional
structures. He also shows that national policy and institutional
environments count: the policy may have been broadly adopted, but
countries dealt with the issue in different ways.
While The Political Power of Bad Ideas focuses on one legendary
episode, its argument about how and why bad policies achieve
legitimacy applies far more broadly. It also extends beyond the
simplistic notion that "ideas matter" to show how they influence
institutional contexts and interact with a nation's political
actors, institutions, and policy dynamics.
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