Peter Caldwell
Public policy explained from the ground up, with real laws, real numbers, and the frameworks political scientists actually use. This book shows you how governments decide what to do about a problem, and why so many decisions fall apart after the vote. Nine chapters follow one problem through its entire life. A private trouble turns into something the government treats as its business, people fight over the fix, a choice gets made, and then an agency has to run the thing long after the cameras leave. Every framework arrives attached to a real case with names, dates, and figures. The chapters cover: - The policy cycle, plus the four types of policy: (1) distributive, (2) redistributive, (3) regulatory, and (4) constituent - Agenda setting through indicators, focusing events, and feedback, along with Kingdon’s multiple streams framework and the way journalists and interest groups frame an issue before anyone votes on it - Legislatures, executive agencies, courts, parties, and think tanks - Cost-benefit analysis and the instruments governments choose between, since taxes, subsidies, mandates, bans, and information campaigns each change behavior in a different way - Six models of decision-making: (1) rational choice, (2) bounded rationality, (3) incrementalism, (4) the garbage can model, (5) the advocacy coalition framework, and (6) punctuated equilibrium - Implementation, the stage where policies most often break. Top-down and bottom-up approaches, coordination across levels of government, and how much discretion street-level bureaucrats really hold - Evaluation, performance metrics, cost-effectiveness, unintended consequences, and sunset provisions - Federalism, public opinion, social movements, and how ideas spread across borders, ending with artificial intelligence, climate, and global health You will work through actual cases: the Cuyahoga River fire that pushed Congress toward the Clean Water Act, the HealthCare.gov launch that crashed within two hours, Prohibition and the illegal market it created, and Ireland’s plastic bag levy that cut usage by roughly 90 percent in a year. Three groups get the most out of it: - Students in a first course on government or policy, who need the vocabulary an instructor expects - People whose work runs into regulators, whether at a nonprofit, a newsroom, a company, or a city agency - Readers who want the news to make more sense than a headline allows No background in political science is required. Terms get defined the moment they appear and again in an alphabetical glossary at the back. Questions close each chapter, worked answers sit in the reference sections, and a historical timeline places every framework in the order it appeared, which makes the book work for self-study or as a course companion. Once you reach the last page, you will read a story about a new regulation and see which stage it’s reached, who stands to gain, and which questions decide whether it will work at all.
