Advocating for the Common Good: People, Politics, Process, and Policy on Capitol Hill offers a rich and accessible guide to policy-making in the nation’s capital, beckoning us to get to the table, make our voices heard, and reinvigorate our policy making institutions. Jane West parts the curtains and brings us behind the scenes with a simple framework which enables both the novice and the experienced to deftly navigate the Washington maze. The 4 P’s—people, politics, process, and policy—are each examined with an eye toward what a successful advocate needs to know. Informed by her forty years of experience as part of the policy-making apparatus in education and disability, expert interviews with those in the room where it happens, a deep dive into congressional procedures and the scholarship on public policy, West delivers a powerful call to action. This affordable, jargon-free guide provides students and professionals with practical tools and a proven step-by-step process for analyzing past policies to understand how and why it became what it is, and then creating an advocacy strategy for a cause in order to change policy going forward.

Advocating for the Common Good: People, Politics, Process, and Policy on Capitol Hill offers a rich and accessible guide to policy-making in the nation’s capital, beckoning us to get to the table, make our voices heard, and reinvigorate our policy making institutions. Jane West parts the curtains and brings us behind the scenes with a simple framework which enables both the novice and the experienced to deftly navigate the Washington maze. The 4 P’s—people, politics, process, and policy—are each examined with an eye toward what a successful advocate needs to know. Informed by her forty years of experience as part of the policy-making apparatus in education and disability, expert interviews with those in the room where it happens, a deep dive into congressional procedures and the scholarship on public policy, West delivers a powerful call to action. This affordable, jargon-free guide provides students and professionals with practical tools and a proven step-by-step process for analyzing past policies to understand how and why it became what it is, and then creating an advocacy strategy for a cause in order to change policy going forward.