Aaron Wildavsky

Jeffrey L. Pressman

This book confronts the widespread impression that policy or program implementation should be easy, arguing instead that implementation, even under the best of circumstances, is exceedingly difficult. Using the Oakland Project as a case study, this book discusses each stage of the process of implementation, demonstrating that completion of what might seem to be a simple sequence of events will in fact depend on a complex chain of reciprocal interactions. Each part of the chain must be built with the others in view, so the separation of policy design from implementation is fatal. The first four chapters illustrate the movement from simplicity to complexity. Chapter 5 discusses the number of decision points throughout the process, giving an indication of the magnitude of the task. Chapter 6 examines why project targets may be set even if they are unlikely to be met, considering both the position of those who set targets -- top federal officials who wish large accomplishments from small resources in a short time -- and those who must implement them -- career bureaucrats and local participants characterized by high needs and low cohesion. The last chapter discusses the relationship between the evaluation of programs and the study of their implementation, arguing that tendencies to assimilate the two should be resisted.

How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation

Implementation

Steven E. Schier

David A. Hopkins

Nelson W. Polsby

Polsby and Wildavsky’s classic text argues that the institutional rules of the presidential nomination and election processes, in combination with the behavior of the mass electorate, structure the strategic choices faced by politicians in powerful and foreseeable ways.

Strategies and Structures of American Politics

Presidential Elections

One of the foremost experts in public policy here attempts not only to describe what public policy is, but given societal changes in the last two decades, to account for its present status.To learn from the past in order to establish public policy as a discipline in its own right, Wildavsky traces its motifs from their beginnings in the 1960s to the 1980s. Starting from the premise that there has been growing polarization of political elites, he shows how public policy as a field has had to face increased politicization. For Wildavsky, the field of public policy needs to incorporate more awareness of the human aspects of policy making: he emphasizes the political choices to be made in a competitive environment and the social relations that sustain them.When the first specialist schools devoted solely to public policy came into existence in the 1960s, the programs of the Great Society were their main impetus. With the disillusionment and failure of the Great Society, the identity of public policy became transformed. New theoretical issues had to be addressed. In this volume, Wildavsky provides a foundation for the theory no less than the practice of policy-making.Aaron Wildavsky is professor of political science, University of California, Berkeley. He founded the School of Public Policy there, and is presently its Director. He was formerly Director of the Russell Sage Foundation. He was the President if the American Political Science Association for the years 1986-1987.

Art and Craft of Policy Analysis

Speaking Truth to Power

Amid the chaos of questions and conflicting information, Aaron Wildavsky arrives with just what the beleaguered citizen needs: a clear, fair, and factual look at how the rival claims of environmentalists and industrialists work, what they mean, and where to start sorting them out.

A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues

But is it True?

Mary Dou

Este livro traz uma visão do risco como fenômeno socialmente construído; Em contraste com aqueles cuja missão é explorar o medo e a incerteza, os autores procuram questionar alguns conceitos tratados como imperativos no meio científico a respeito de riscos potenciais à saúde; Os capítulos abrangem a chamada “teoria cultural de percepção de riscos”, que afirma que o incômodo das pessoas com o perigo jamais deve ser entendido ao pé da letra; De acordo com os autores é preciso um olhar mais abrangente sobre o risco para descobrir quais formas de organização social estão sendo “defendidas” ou “atacadas”; Trata-se de um livro breve, organizado em torno da premissa de que a classificação de certos pontos específicos (tais como a energia nuclear ou a exposição ao amianto ou à radiação ionizante) como perigos ambientais é determinada por fatores culturais; Os autores afirmam que as fontes do ambientalismo nos Estados Unidos e em outros países não são, portanto, objetivas, empíricas, racionais, nem isentas de juízos de valor; muito pelo contrário, o ambientalismo reflete fatores morais, econômicos e políticos, entre outros, que estão longe de ser imparciais; Dessa forma, o julgamento do que constitui ou não um risco passa por uma seleção de viés social;

Um ensaio sobre a seleção de riscos tecnológicos e ambientais

Risco e cultura

Protecting ourselves against the risks associated with modern technologies has emerged as a major public concern throughout the industrialized world. Searching for Safety is unique in its exposition of a theory that explains how and why risk taking makes life safer and exposes the high risk of avoiding change. The book covers a wide range, including how the human body, as well as plants, animals, and insects, cope with danger. Wildavsky asks whether piling on safety measures actually improves safety. While he agrees that society should sometimes try to prevent large-scale harm, he explains why a strategy of resilience—learning from error how to bounce back in better shape—is usually better. His intention is to shift the debate about risk from passive prevention of harm to an active search for safety. This book will be of special interest to those concerned with risk involving technology, health, safety, environmental protection, regulation, and more.

Searching for Safety

How to behave in the diaspora has been a central problem for Jews over the ages. They have debated whether to assimilate by adopting local customs or whether to remain a God-centered people loyal to their temporal rulers but maintaining the peculiar customs that separated them from their host nations. The question not only of survival, but of the basis for survival, is also a central problem in the Joseph stories of the Book of Genesis. The work shows its readers the grand alternatives of Judaism, instilled in two larger-than-life figures, so its readers can reassess for themselves the road Judaism did not take, and understand why Joseph though admirable in many respects, is left out of the rest of the Bible. The question is answered through the stories about how Joseph, the son of Jacob, saved his people/family from famine by becoming a high-ranking administrator to Pharaoh. By analyzing his behavior to the people over whom he exercises power, Joseph lords it over his brothers, grieves his father, takes lands from Egyptian farmers, and engages in forced deportation. Wildavsky explains why Joseph-the-assimilator is replaced in the Book of Exodus by Moses-the-lawgiver. The book ends by demonstrating that Joseph and Moses are, and are undoubtedly meant to be exact opposites. As in his earlier book on The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader, Wildavsky combines analysis of political and administrative leadership with both traditional and modern study of texts: thematic linkages via plot, grammar, dreams, poetry, and religious doctrine. Thus the chapter on "Joseph the Administrator" is preceded by a chapter on Joseph as The Dream Lord" and followed by an analysis and explanation of why Jacob's obscure blessings to his sons are more like curses. Always the emphasis is on the reciprocal influence of religion and politics, on rival answers to questions about how Hebrews should relate to each other and to outsiders. New, in paperback, the book will be of interest to biblical scholars and readers as well as those concerned with the interaction of religion and political life.

Joseph the Administrator and the Politics of Religion in Biblical Israel

Assimilation Versus Separation

Hugh Heclo

Community and Policy Inside British Politics

The Private Government of Public Money (by) Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky

Community and Policy inside British Politics

The Private Government of Public Money

The author of this stunning set of essays on politics and public policy makes crystal clear the meaning of the title. "The revolutionaries of contemporary America do not seek to redistribute privilege from those who have it to those who do not. These radicals wish to arrange a transfer of power from those elites who now exercise it to another elite, namely themselves, who do not. This aspiring elite is of the same race (white), the same class (upper middle and upper), and the same educational background (the best colleges and universities) as those they wish to displace." Wildavsky's bracing work takes a close look at these elites, who probably make up little more than one percent of the population. He sees their common denominator as hostility toward the masses, anti-American attitudes, derision of authority, and a belief in participatory rather than representative politics. The author carries through these themes in a variety of essays on black-white racial relations, social work orientations and black militancy, the politics of budgetary reform, elite and mass trends in the political party system, and the substitution of bureaucratic for democratic modes of advancing the policy process. This work is, in short, vintage Wildavsky: tough minded, spirited, and plain-spoken political analysis. In his new Introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz examines what has changed and what continues to be salient in Wildavsky's line of analysis. Essentially, the report card on The Revolt Against the Masses is that the situation described in these essays has changed somewhat in style but hardly at all in substance. The nuclear shield replaces the ABM treaty, and Afghanistan replaces Vietnam as centers of political gravity-but the same coalition of forces across party and economy still dominate the American political process. The justifiably famous essay on "The Two Presidencies" shows how persistent is the gap between the conflict over domestic priorities and the consensus on foreign policy-and why. This is, in short, a classic text that continues to merit careful study by all those interested in political life. Aaron Wildavsky was, until his death in 1993, professor of political science and public policy at the University of California in Berkeley. He was also director of its Survey Research Center. He served as director of the Russell-Sage Foundation, was a president of the American Political Science Association, and held a number of visiting professorships during his lifetime. Most recently, Transaction has posthumously published Wildavsky's complete essays and papers in five volumes. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt distinguished university professor emeritus at Rutgers, The State University, and longtime friend and associate of Aaron Wildavsky.

And Other Essays on Politics and Public Policy

The Revolt Against the Masses

Mary Douglas

Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do. Some dangers are unknown; others are known, but not by us because no one person can know everything. Most people cannot be aware of most dangers at most times. Hence, no one can calculate precisely the total risk to be faced. How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore? On what basis are certain dangers guarded against and others relegated to secondary status? This book explores how we decide what risks to take and which to ignore, both as individuals and as a culture.

Aaron Wildavsky

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