A Brief History of Public Policy since the New Deal

Andrew E. Busch

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538128282
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A Brief History of Public Policy Since the New Deal traces the development of national domestic policy from the Great Depression through the early Trump years. A chronological look that illuminates the cumulative effects of policy change, the book also focuses on themes such as the interplay of ideas, events, politics, and people; models such as incrementalism, multiple streams, and punctuated equilibrium; the importance of foreign policy issues to the development of domestic policy; and features including the importance of problem definition and the "law of unanticipated consequences." Following the narrative, each chapter includes a summary of seven key policy areas: economic policy, social welfare, civil rights, environmental and education policy, moral/cultural issues, and federalism. The material is organized by eras identified by presidencies and by whether the era represented a burst of policymaking, made possible because key inputs of ideas, events, politics, and people aligned for change, or a rough equilibrium. Although presidencies are used to define eras, the role of all the institutions are given their due.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1 The New Deal
• 2 The Truman-Eisenhower Equilibrium
• 3 The New Frontier / Great Society
• 4 The Nixon-Ford-Carter Equilibrium
• 5 The Reagan Revolution
• 6 The Bush-Clinton Equilibrium
• 7 George W. Bush and the Republican Non-Breakout
• 8 New Directions in the Wake of the Great Recession? The Obama and Trump “Transformations”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography