Was 1992 a realigning election? Did the midterm elections of 1994 realign the realignment? Will 1996 carry the United States forward on yet another changed trajectory? In this volume of original essays, leading political scientists examine key components of the American agenda and assess the current administration's position in light of historical

Previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, this book draws on the insights of the existing literature on agenda setting and policy changes to explore the dynamics of attention allocation and its consequences.
Attention is a crucial variable in understanding modern politics. Shifts in attention have dramatic consequences for both politics and policy decisions.
This volume includes case studies of nine different political systems including the US, Canada, several European systems, and the EU itself. It asks the following questions:
Which are the dynamics of agenda-setting in the EU?
Which role do political parties play in attention allocation?
What are the cross national differences in attention to health care?
What role does science and expertise play in attention-allocation?
What are the effects of political institutions?

Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas will be of interest to students and scholars of policy analysis and public policy.

Previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, this book draws on the insights of the existing literature on agenda setting and policy changes to explore the dynamics of attention allocation and its consequences. Attention is a crucial variable in understanding modern politics. Shifts in attention have dramatic consequences for both politics and policy decisions. This volume includes case studies of nine different political systems including the US, Canada, several European systems, and the EU itself. It asks the following questions: Which are the dynamics of agenda-setting in the EU? Which role do political parties play in attention allocation? What are the cross national differences in attention to health care? What role does science and expertise play in attention-allocation? What are the effects of political institutions? Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas will be of interest to students and scholars of policy analysis and public policy.

Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, the United States experienced a vast expansion in national policy making. During this period, the federal government extended its scope into policy arenas previously left to civil society or state and local governments. With The Great Broadening, Bryan D. Jones, Sean M. Theriault, and Michelle Whyman examine in detail the causes, internal dynamics, and consequences of this extended burst of activity. They argue that the broadening of government responsibilities into new policy areas such as health care, civil rights, and gender issues and the increasing depth of existing government programs explain many of the changes in America politics since the 1970s. Increasing government attention to particular issues was motivated by activist groups. In turn, the beneficiaries of the government policies that resulted became supporters of the government's activity, leading to the broad acceptance of its role. This broadening and deepening of government, however, produced a reaction as groups critical of its activities organized to resist and roll back its growth.

Was 1992 a realigning election? Did the midterm elections of 1994 realign the realignment? Will 1996 carry the United States forward on yet another changed trajectory? In this volume of original essays, leading political scientists examine key components of the American agenda and assess the current administration's position in light of historical precedents and future trends. Each conclusion is unique, born of a combination of the empirical record and its interpretation, but essays by Bryan Jones and Larry Dodd help to put the wide-ranging views represented here in long-term perspective.

Most models of political decision-making maintain that individual preferences remain relatively constant. Why, then, are there often sudden abrupt changes in public opinion on political issues? Or total reversals in congressional support for specific legislation, as happened with the voting on the Superconducting Supercollider? Bryan D. Jones answers these questions by connecting insights from cognitive science and rational choice theory to political life. Individuals and political systems alike, Jones argues, tend to be attentive to only one issue at a time. Using numerous examples from elections, public-opinion polls, congressional deliberations and bureaucratic decision-making, he shows how shifting attentiveness can and does alter choices and political outcomes - even when underlying preferences remain relatively fixed. An individual, for example, may initially decide to vote for a candidate because of her stand on spending, but change his vote when he learns of her position on abortion, never really balancing the two options.

"Politics and the Architecture of Choice" draws on work in political science, economics, cognitive science, and psychology to offer an innovative theory of how people and organizations adapt to change and why these adaptations don't always work. Our decision-making capabilities, Jones argues, are both rational and adaptive. But because our rationality is bounded and our adaptability limited, our actions are not based simply on objective information from our environments. Instead, we overemphasize some factors and neglect others, and our inherited limitations--such as short-term memory capacity--all act to affect our judgment.
Jones shows how we compensate for and replicate these limitations in groups by linking the behavioral foundations of human nature to the operation of large-scale organizations in modern society. Situating his argument within the current debate over the rational choice model of human behavior, Jones argues that we should begin with rationality as a standard and then study the uniquely human ways in which we deviate from it.

On any given day, policymakers are required to address a multitude of problems and make decisions about a variety of issues, from the economy and education to health care and defense. This has been true for years, but until now no studies have been conducted on how politicians manage the flood of information from a wide range of sources. How do they interpret and respond to such inundation? Which issues do they pay attention to and why? Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner answer these questions on decision-making processes and prioritization in "The Politics of Attention,"
Analyzing fifty years of data, Jones and Baumgartner's book is the first study of American politics based on a new information-processing perspective. The authors bring together the allocation of attention and the operation of governing institutions into a single model that traces public policies, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions across multiple institutions.
"The Politics of Attention "offers a groundbreaking approach to American politics based on the responses of policymakers to the flow of information. It asks how the system solves, or fails to solve, problems rather than looking to how individual preferences are realized through political action.

As the recent shake-up at GM underscores, the new global economy has widened the cracks and stresses in the American auto industry. But, as this new edition of the highly regarded Sustaining Hand reminds us, the auto industry remains a central if volatile player in American urban politics.

In this significantly revised update, Bryan Jones and Lynn Bachelor have extended and refined their analysis of Detroit-area automakers and political leaders negotiating the selection of new factory sites (and thus the addition of thousands of jobs to the local economy). Their thorough revision develops a crucial new concept--solution sets--updates all plant location decisions reported in the first edition, and adds an instructive new case study--the Chrysler Jefferson Avenue plant in Detroit.

This book seeks to uncover the linkages between business leaders(motivated by profit) and political decision makers (motivated by electoral gain) by examining the responses of public officials in three Michigan "auto cities"--Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac--to plant-location choices made by General Motors and Chrysler. Throughout, the authors focus on three issues-the relationship between the local industrial economy and the local political system, the structure of urban politics, and the degree of independence of political decision makers in urban affairs.

As Jones and Bachelor show, urban regimes, in their efforts to shore up sagging economies, develop characteristic solution-sets that are applied almost routinely to superficially similar situations. In fact, they contend, it's rare for a regime to start with a problem and search for a policy solution. Instead, through a pattern of interactions among politicians, business executives, labor unions, and other interested parties, a "package" of problem-definitions and preferred solutions emerges. But if applied indiscriminately, these solutions can become dysfunctional, which in turn may attract new participants to the policy process and ultimately alter the regime's character.

"An excellent case analysis of urban political economy. . . interesting, sophisticated, well written. It is sure to be widely discussed."--Clarence N. Stone, author of "Urban Policy and Politics in a Bureaucratic Age" and "Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent."

"This new version makes significant new contributions to both the urban politics and public policy literatures, and indeed marries them in an utterly unique way. The concept of solution sets is brilliant, and I assume that it will be much discussed and utilized in the urban literature."--Dennis Judd, author of "The Politics of American Cities: Private Power and Public Policy."

Praise for the first edition:

"An excellent book. The authors demonstrate a considerable capacity for theoretical innovation and a rare appreciation of the detail and complexity of local economic development. This book is a model for those who would like to situate the local economic development process in a more general analytical framework."--"Urban Studies"

"A provocative addition to the literature"--"Choice"

How does the government decide what's a problem and what isn't? Like individuals, Congress is subject to the "paradox of search." If policy makers don't look for problems, they won't find those that need to be addressed. But if they carry out a thorough search, they will almost certainly find new problems-and with the definition of each new problem comes the possibility of creating a program to address it. With The Politics of Attention, leading policy scholars Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones demonstrated the central role attention plays in how governments prioritize problems. Now, with The Politics of Information, they turn the focus to the problem-detection process itself, showing how the growth or contraction of government is closely related to how it searches for information and how, as an organization, it analyzes its findings. Better search processes that incorporate more diverse viewpoints lead to more intensive policy-making activity. Similarly, limiting search processes leads to declines in policy-making. At the same time, the authors find little evidence that the factors usually thought to be responsible for government expansion - partisan control, changes in presidential leadership, and shifts in public opinion - can be systematically related to the patterns they observe.

Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, the United States experienced a vast expansion in national policy making. During this period, the federal government extended its scope into policy arenas previously left to civil society or state and local governments. With The Great Broadening, Bryan D. Jones, Sean M. Theriault, and Michelle Whyman examine in detail the causes, internal dynamics, and consequences of this extended burst of activity. They argue that the broadening of government responsibilities into new policy areas such as health care, civil rights, and gender issues and the increasing depth of existing government programs explain many of the changes in America politics since the 1970s. Increasing government attention to particular issues was motivated by activist groups. In turn, the beneficiaries of the government policies that resulted became supporters of the government's activity, leading to the broad acceptance of its role. This broadening and deepening of government, however, produced a reaction as groups critical of its activities organized to resist and roll back its growth.

How does the government decide what's a problem and what isn't? Like individuals, Congress is subject to the "paradox of search." If policy makers don't look for problems, they won't find those that need to be addressed. But if they carry out a thorough search, they will almost certainly find new problems-and with the definition of each new problem comes the possibility of creating a program to address it. With The Politics of Attention, leading policy scholars Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones demonstrated the central role attention plays in how governments prioritize problems. Now, with The Politics of Information, they turn the focus to the problem-detection process itself, showing how the growth or contraction of government is closely related to how it searches for information and how, as an organization, it analyzes its findings. Better search processes that incorporate more diverse viewpoints lead to more intensive policy-making activity. Similarly, limiting search processes leads to declines in policy-making. At the same time, the authors find little evidence that the factors usually thought to be responsible for government expansion - partisan control, changes in presidential leadership, and shifts in public opinion - can be systematically related to the patterns they observe.

The authors of this volume argue that urban education is in urgent need of reform and that, although there have been plenty of innovative and even promising attempts to improve conditions, most have been doomed. The reason for this, they agree, lies in the failure of our major cities to develop their "civic capacity"--the ability to build and maintain a broad social and political coalition across all sectors of the urban community in pursuit of a common goal.

Drawing upon an ambitious eleven-city study funded by the National Science Foundation, the authors synthesize and make sense of the enormous amount of data from Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Not only is this a vivid report from the front lines of big city schooling, but this work challenges us to rethink our approach to the crisis in our schools.

The authors vigorously contend that it is essential for all (or most) important actors in an urban community to join together in a shared vision of what is wrong in the schools and how to fix it, and to pursue that vision strongly and systematically over a long time. That can only happen, however, if those same actors develop the ability and willingness to set aside narrow aims and opportunistic behavior in favor of pursuing the collective good.

Written for a wide spectrum of potential readers--including educators, social scientists, policymakers, and every citizen who cares about his or her child's education--this book restores coalition politics to the center of educational reform and reminds us to look well beyond pedagogy and management theory for solutions to problems that are immune to the usual remedies. Drawing on select cases, the authors show that effective civic coalitions can be built. The struggle for reform can be won.

While governmental policies and institutions may remain more or less stable for years, they can also change suddenly and unpredictably in response to new political agendas and crises. What causes stability or change in the political system? What role do political institutions play in this process?
To investigate these questions, "Policy Dynamics" draws on the most extensive data set yet compiled for public policy issues in the United States. Spanning the past half-century, this data set makes it possible to trace policies and legislation, public and media attention to the issues involved, and governmental decisions over time and across institutions. Some chapters analyze particular policy areas, such as health care, national security, and immigration, while others focus on institutional questions, such as congressional procedures and agendas, and the differing responses by Congress and the Supreme Court to new issues.
"Policy Dynamics" presents a radical vision of how the federal government evolves in response to new challenges-and provides the research tools that others may use to critique or extend that vision.

  On any given day, policymakers are required to address a multitude of problems and make decisions about a variety of issues, from the economy and education to health care and defense. This has been true for years, but until now no studies have been conducted on how politicians manage the flood of information from a wide range of sources. How do they interpret and respond to such inundation? Which issues do they pay attention to and why? Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner answer these questions on decision-making processes and prioritization in "The Politics of Attention,"
Analyzing fifty years of data, Jones and Baumgartner’ s book is the first study of American politics based on a new information-processing perspective. The authors bring together the allocation of attention and the operation of governing institutions into a single model that traces public policies, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions across multiple institutions.
"The Politics of Attention "offers a groundbreaking approach to American politics based on the responses of policymakers to the flow of information. It asks how the system solves, or fails to solve, problems rather than looking to how individual preferences are realized through political action.