During the past decade, Democrats and Republicans each have received about fifty percent of the votes and controlled about half of the government, but this has not resulted in policy deadlock. Despite highly partisan political posturing, the policy regime has been largely moderate. Incremental, yet substantial, policy innovations such as welfare reform; deficit reduction; the North American Free Trade Agreement; and the deregulation of telecommunications, banking, and agriculture have been accompanied by such continuities as Social Security and Medicare, the maintenance of earlier immigration reforms, and the persistence of many rights-based policies, including federal affirmative action.
In Seeking the Center, twenty-one contributors analyze policy outcomes in light of the frequent alternation in power among evenly divided parties. They show how the triumph of policy moderation and the defeat of more ambitious efforts, such as health care reform, can be explained by mutually supporting economic, intellectual, and political forces. Demonstrating that the determinants of public policy become clear by probing specific issues, rather than in abstract theorizing, they restore the politics of policymaking to the forefront of the political science agenda.
A successor to Martin A. Levin and Marc K. Landy’s influential The New Politics of Public Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), this book will be vital reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in political science and public policy, as well as a resource for scholars in both fields.
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Martin Levin, Marc Landy, and Martin Shapiro have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to explain how politics shaped policy during the past decade. Their analyses - informative, insightful, and original - develop a common theme: despite partisan upheavals and conflict in Washington, continuity and moderation best characterize the evolution of ... national policies. This splendid collection is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand ... how political ideas, institutions, and strategies shape major public policies in the United States. -- Gary Jacobson, University of California at San Diego Martin Levin, Marc Landy and Martin Shapiro have brought together a pleasing and provocative set of essays on politics and policy making. Taken together, they show the American 'center' poised for an incremental leap into the twenty-first century. -- Richard A. Brody, Stanford University The editors and their all-star cast persuasively argue that moderate policies can produce substantial change. Seeking the Center is an excellent 'one-stop-shop' describing and explaining American public policy at the turn of the [twenty-first] century. -- John J. Coleman, University of Wisconsin
List of Figures vi Preface vii PART I Introduction 1(32) Durability and Change 3(30) Martin A. Levin Marc K. Landy PART II Taxing and Spending 33(78) Budgeting More, Deciding Less 35(19) Eric M. Patashnik From Expansion to Austerity: The New Politics of Taxing and Spending 54(27) Paul Pierson Four Pathways of Power: Probing the Political Dynamics of Federal Tax Policy in the Turbulent 1980s and 1990s 81(30) David R. Beam Timothy J. Conlan PART III Rights Policies 111(80) Immigration Reform Redux 113(19) Peter H. Schuck Republican Efforts to End Affirmative Action: Walking a Fine Line 132(40) John David Skrentny On the Resilience of Rights 172(19) Thomas F. Burke PART IV Social Welfare Policy 191(120) The Evolving Old Politics of Social Security 193(22) Martha Derthick The Politics of Rights Retraction: Welfare Reform from Entitlement to Block Grant 215(24) Steven M. Teles Timothy S. Prinz The New Politics of the Working Poor 239(25) Christopher Howard Dead on Arrival? New Politics, Old Politics, and the Case of National Health Reform 264(28) Cathie Jo Martin The New Politics of the Census 292(19) Peter Skerry PART V Foreign Trade 311(26) The Postwar Liberal Trade Regime: Resilience under Pressure 313(24) David Vogel PART VI Durability and Change 337(102) Much Huffing and Puffing, Little Change 339(11) David R. Mayhew Bill Clinton and the Politics of Divided Democracy 350(31) Sidney M. Milkis Two-Tier Politics Revisited 381(20) Wilson Carey McWilliams Exit ``Equality, Enter ``Fairness 401(24) Eugene Bardach The Politics and Policy of the Regulated Market, Efficiency-Constrained Welfare State 425(14) Martin Shapiro Contributors 439(4) Index 443
Martin A. Levin is a professor of politics at Brandeis University. He is coauthor of After the Cure: Managing AIDs and Other Public Health Crises (University Press of Kansas, 2000). Marc Landy is a professor of political science at Boston College. He is coauthor of Presidential Greatness (University Press of Kansas, 2000). Martin Shapiro is the James W. and Isabel Coffroth Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law. He is the author of Who Guards the Guardians: Judicial Control of Administration (University of Georgia Press, 1988).
