Flying is an extremely safe way to travel. Fewer than 14,000 individuals perished in U.S. airline disasters during the twentieth century. In contrast, nearly three times as many people lose their lives in automobile accidents every year. Yet plane crashes have a tremendous impact on public perceptions of air safety in the United States. When a crash occurs domestically, media coverage is immediate and continuous. Government teams rush to investigate, elected officials offer condolences and promise to find the cause, and airlines and plane manufacturers seek to avoid responsibility. Regulations are frequently proposed in response to a particular incident, but meaningful change often does not occur. In The Plane Truth, Roger Cobb and David Primo examine the impact of high-visibility plane crashes on airline transportation policy. Regulation is disjointed and reactive, in part due to extensive media coverage of airline disasters. The authors describe the typical responses of various players -elected officials, investigative agencies, airlines, and the media. While all agree that safety is the primary concern in air travel, failure to agree on a definition of safety leads to policy conflicts. Looking at all airline crashes in the 1990s, the authors examine how particular features of an accident correspond to the level of media attention it receives, as well as how airline disasters affect subsequent actions by the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, and others. Three accidents are considered in detail: USAir flight 427 (September 1994), ValuJet flight 592 (May 1996), and TWA flight 800 (July 1996). The authors also discuss how the September 11 terrorist attacks turned attention away from safety and toward security. Cobb and Primo make several policy recommendations based on their findings. These include calling on lawmakers and regulators to avoid reactive regulation and instead to focus on systematic problems in airline safety, like the antiquated air traffic control system. Concerned that aviation security is eclipsing aviation safety in the wake of September 11, they encourage federal agencies to strike a better balance between the two. Finally, in order to address the FAA's poor track record in balancing airline safety regulation with its other duties, they recommend the creation of a new federal agency that is responsible for aviation safety. The Plane Truth provides a framework for understanding conflicts about the meaning of air safety and the implications of these battles for public policy.

Agenda-setting is a key component in the democratic process if political outsiders are to have their concerns taken seriously. However, their efforts sometimes fail for reasons other than insufficient resources or incompetent leaders: opponents often succeed in keeping new issues from ever reaching the agendas of decision-makers.

This is the first book devoted to examining why some issues proposed by aggrieved individuals or groups are denied access to policy agendas. It develops a theoretical framework for the study of agenda setting and agenda denial, emphasizing the cultural strategies opponents use to impede and defeat policy initiatives, and examining specific strategies of avoidance, attack, and redefinition that explain why certain issues don't receive consideration.

The book contains seven case studies that examine the policy process from the perspective of the strategies opponents of policy initiatives use and demonstrate that agenda denial can result when opponents succeed in portraying initiatives as threats to widely held world views and identities. Four cases involving federal agencies show how the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Food and Drug Administration have kept issues off their own agendas, how the accounting profession has avoided SEC regulation, and how pro-life forces kept the French abortion pill off the FDA agenda. Two cases focusing on public health issues examine why national health insurance has never made it onto the federal agenda and how local agencies in Texas prevented residents of minority neighborhoods from obtaining clean water. Finally, a case from outside the U.S. shows how Kurt Waldheim's Nazi past failed to become an issue in his campaign for President of Austria.

While most books emphasize issue initiators, Cultural Strategies of Agenda Denial makes a unique addition to the agenda-setting literature by focusing on the actions of opponents and emphasizing the political importance of cultural resources and culturally constituted ideas to the ongoing debate in political science concerning how open and democratic our system really is.

At the nexus of politics and policy development lies persistent conflict over where problems come from, what they signify, and, based on the answers to those questions, what kinds of solutions should be sought. Policy researchers call this process "problem definition."

Written for both scholars and students, this book explains how and why social issues come to be defined in different ways, how these definitions are expressed in the world of politics, and what consequences these definitions have for government action and agenda-setting dynamics. The authors demonstrate in two theoretical chapters and seven provocative case studies how problem definition affects policymaking for high-profile social issues like AIDS, drugs, and sexual harassment as well as for problems like traffic congestion, plant closings, agricultural tax benefits, and air transportation.

By examining the way social problems are framed for political discussion, the authors illuminate the unique impact of beliefs, values, ideas, and language on the public policymaking process and its outcomes. In so doing, they establish a common vocabulary for the study of problem definition; review and critique the insights of existing work on the topic; and identify directions for future research.