Policy innovation in state government

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Thomas R. Dye

Cutting-edge in approach, this book gives readers concrete tools for not only understanding public policy in general, but for analyzing specific public policies. It focuses on what policies governments pursue, why governments pursue the policies they do, and what the consequences of these policies are. Very contemporary in perspective, it introduces eight analytical models currently used by political scientists to describe and explain political life and then, using these various analytical models--singly and in combination--explores specific public policies in a variety of key domestic policy areas. Explores eight analytic models--rationalism, incrementalism, elitism, interest group conflict, institutionalism, game theory, public choice, and the familiar policy process model. Uses the various analytic models to describe and explain public policy in such areas as criminal justice, health and welfare, education, economic policy, taxation, international trade and immigration, environmental protection, civil rights, federalism, and national defense. For anyone interested in the complex dynamics of the public policy making process in relation to a broad range of contemporary issues.

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Pamela G. Price

In a cultural history which considers the transformation of south Indian institutions under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, Pamela Price focuses on the two former 'little kingdoms' of Ramnad and Sivagangai which came under colonial governance as revenue estates. She demonstrates how rivalries among the royal families and major zamindari temples, and the disintegration of indigenous institutions of rule, contributed to the development of nationalist ideologies and new political identities among the people of southern Tamil country. The author also shows how religious symbols and practices going back to the seventeenth century were reformulated and acquired a new significance in the colonial context. Arguing for a reappraisal of the relationship of Hinduism to politics, Price finds that these symbols and practices continue to inform popular expectation of political leadership today.

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/Ronald E. Powaski

"In Return to Armageddon, Ronald E. Powaski assesses the dangers that beset us as we enter an increasingly unstable political world. With the Start I and II treaties, completed by George Bush in 1991 and 1993 respectively, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, it seemed as if the nuclear clock had been successfully turned back to a safer hour. But Powaski shows that there is much less reason for optimism than we may like to think. Continued U.S-Russian cooperation can no longer be assured. To make matters worse, Russia has not ratified the Start II Treaty and the U.S. Senate has failed to approve the CTBT. Perhaps even more ominous, the effort to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nonweapon states is threatened by nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan. The nuclear club is growing and its most recent members are increasingly hostile. Indeed, it is becoming ever more difficult to keep track of the expertise and materials needed to build nuclear weapons, which almost certainly will find their way into terrorist hands."--Jacket.

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E.H. Kossmann

"What political theories did the Dutch develop in the seventeenth century, to describe and justify the existence of a republic that in one generation had grown conspicuously in wealth and power? In this book, the author shows the meaning of political philosophy for a new and surprisingly energetic state." "The first essay is a study of Dutch political theory in the seventeenth century and is based on an analysis of publications in law and philosophy dating from the 1660s to the 1690s. The second essay studies the Dutch concept of popular sovereignty in the early seventeenth century, whereas the third considers the Dutch seventeenth and eighteenth-century views on the nature of a republic. These three essays, previously published as independent articles, are brought together here for the first time in English. An introduction has been added in which the author places the original texts in a new perspective"--Book jacket.