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Showing papers in "Political Science Quarterly in 1989"


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The transformation of difficulties into problems is the sine qua non of political rebellion, legal disputes, interest-group mobilization, and of moving policy problems onto the public agenda.
Abstract: There is an old saw in political science that difficult conditions become problems only when people come to see them as amenable to human action. Until then, difficulties remain embedded in the realm of nature, accident, and fate -a realm where there is no choice about what happens to us. The conversion of difficulties into problems is said to be the sine qua non of political rebellion, legal disputes, interest-group mobilization, and of moving policy problems onto the public agenda.' This article is about how situations come to be seen as caused by human actions and amenable to human intervention. Despite the acknowledged importance of this phenomenon as a precursor to political participation and to agenda setting, there is little systematic inquiry about it in the political science literature. For the most part, the question is dealt with under the rubric of agenda setting, even though the transformation of difficulties into problems takes place in something of a black box prior to agenda formation. Three strands of thinking in the agenda literature contribute indirectly to an understanding of this topic. One strand focuses on the identity and characteristics of political actors -leaders, interest groups, professionals, breaucrats. It looks at the actors' attitudes, resources, and opportunities

1,513 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In contrast to the image of community, voluntarism, civic dependability, and neighbor-helping-neighbor that has always exerted a powerful impression on American public consciousness, these images are at variance with the contemporary reality of nonprofit service organizations as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Since the early decades of the American republic, nonprofit organizations have played a critical role in helping people in need by providing education, training, residences, counseling, and in-kind and cash support. Moreover, President George Bush has followed Ronald Reagan in calling upon nonprofit agencies to take the leading role in American society in addressing social problems. Their belief in the efficacy of nonprofits (President Bush's "thousand points of light") combined with the current political and financial constraints on government spending, suggests an even larger service role for nonprofit organizations in the future. Nonprofit organizations invoke the images of community, voluntarism, civic dependability, and neighbor-helping-neighbor that have always exerted a powerful impression on American public consciousness.1 However, largely as a result of this expanded role in providing services for government, these images are at variance with the contemporary reality of nonprofit service organizations. Rather than depending mostly on private charity and volunteers, most nonprofit service organizations depend on government for over half of their revenues; for many small agencies, government support comprises their entire budget. In contrast to the

350 citations


Journal Article•DOI•

180 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: Quadagno et al. as discussed by the authors explored the birth of old age assistance in the United States and revealed how public assistance grew from colonial-era poor laws, locally financed and administered, into a massive federal bureaucracy.
Abstract: Why did the United States lag behind Germany, Britain, and Sweden in adopting a national plan for the elderly? When the Social Security Act was finally enacted in 1935, why did it depend on a class-based double standard? Why is old age welfare in the United States still less comprehensive than its European counterparts? In this sophisticated analytical chronicle of one hundred years of American welfare history, Jill Quadagno explores the curious birth of old age assistance in the United States. Grounded in historical research and informed by social science theory, the study reveals how public assistance grew from colonial-era poor laws, locally financed and administered, into a massive federal bureaucracy.

146 citations


Book•DOI•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the combination of public and private initiatives that makes up the present U.S. social sector and reveal complexities that have been ignored in recent ideological arguments.
Abstract: Looking at the theory and practice of privatization in its broadest manifestations, the contributors to this volume scrutinize the combination of public and private initiatives that makes up the present U.S. social sector. As they discuss privatization both in production and delivery of services and in financing, they reveal complexities that have been ignored in recent ideological arguments. This book, while warning about political misuse of privatization, offers an unusually rigorous definition and theory of the concept and presents a number of case studies that show how public and private sectors variously cooperate, compete, or complement one another in social programs--and how various systems have accommodated to the privatization rhetoric that has come to the fore under the Reagan administration. The contributors are Marc Bendick, Jr., Evelyn Z. Brodkin, Arnold Gurin, Alfred J. Kahn, Sheila B. Kamerman, Michael O'Higgins, Martin Rein Richard Rose, Paul Starr, Mitchell Sviridoff, and Dennis Young. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

144 citations



Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, two traditional notions of parties as Campaigners are discussed, as well as the Washington perspective of party campaigns from the perspective of the candidate and the voters, as perceived by the candidates.
Abstract: Introduction 1. Two Traditional Conceptions of Parties as Campaigners 2. Institutionalized National Parties 3. Party Campaigning from the Washington Perspective 4. Party Campaigning as Perceived by the Candidates 5. Prospects for the Parties Appendix A. Methodology Appendix B. Questionnaire Notes Bibliography Index

113 citations



Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: This paper reviewed some of the empirical English language literature that has directly or indirectly considered these matters by examining national-level survey data and found that the literature was not very extensive, and they found that most of them focused on the effects of these preferences on government policies.
Abstract: To what extent do citizens of the United States and other countries prefer particular social welfare policies? How have these opinions changed over the last twenty years? What have been the effects of these preferences on government policies? This article reviews some of the empirical English language literature that has directly or indirectly considered these matters by examining nationallevel survey data. ' Although we initially expected an investigation of this research to be a mammoth undertaking, we found that the literature was not very extensive.

106 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In the early postwar period, it was assumed that the United States used its power to organize the operation of the non-Communist international system to "make and enforce the rules for the world political economy" as one scholar put it as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In recent years no topic has occupied the attention of scholars of international relations more than that of American hegemonic decline. The erosion of American economic, political, and military power is unmistakable. The historically unprecedented resources and capabilities that stood behind United States early postwar diplomacy, and that led Henry Luce in the 1940s to herald an "American century," have given way to an equally remarkable and rapid redistribution of international power and wealth. In the guise of theories of "hegemonic stability," scholars have been debating the extent of hegemonic decline and its consequences. I Although scholars of international political economy have analyzed the consequences of American hegemonic decline, less effort has been directed at examining the earlier period of hegemonic ascendancy. Theorists of hegemonic power and decline pass rather quickly over the early postwar period. In rather superficial fashion, it is assumed that the United States used its power to organize the operation of the non-Communist international system to "make and enforce the rules for the world political economy" as one scholar put it.2 While the rest of the in-

94 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: Privatization in the United States has been analyzed in this article, where the author analyzes the emergence of privatization on the public agenda in the US and analyzes its role in public policy debates.
Abstract: The rapid dissemination throughout the world of the language and programs of privatization has been likened to a revolution or a boom.' The rapidity with which the terminology has been adopted presents an anomaly to those accustomed to emphasizing the forces of incrementalism and resistance to policy change. And the apparent application of privatization techniques to environs as diverse as those of Great Britain, Turkey, Brazil, and Japan poses a challenge to those used to portraying public policies as the offshoot of economic and developmental circumstances or extensions of national norms.2 This article analyzes the emergence of privatization on the public agenda of the United States. As a self-conscious movement with genuine influence at the national level, privatization came later to the United States than to several other nations. Since the early 1980s, however, privatization in the United States has moved from an intellectual fringe to become a centerpiece in contemporary public policy debates. The Reagan administration began to target programs and assets for privatization early in its first term. In early 1987, the first major privatization was carried out with the sale of the government's 85 percent interest in Conrail, a corporation established by Congress in 1976 to provide freight rail service in the North-

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on fifty-five large cities to study developments in urban hardship conditions in the 1970s primarily using decennial census data and find that the most distressed cities lost ground relative to their suburbs.
Abstract: The decennial census allows us to take a closer look at the social and economic conditions of the country than we can get at any other time. In this article we focus on fifty-five large cities to study developments in urban hardship conditions in the 1970s primarily using decennial census data. Our analysis indicates that in the 1970s these fifty-five cities lost ground relative to their suburbs; that the most distressed cities lost ground relative to other cities; and that the problem of concentrated poverty increased and is correlated with the worsening problems of the most distressed large cities. Unfortunately, decennial census data are slow to emerge and take time to assess. These problems with studying urban conditions are compounded by a lack of data for the intervening years between the decennial censuses. We have done our best in this article to update the analysis of urban conditions and present more recent data that suggest the hardship conditions of large cities persist into the 1980s and in fact are getting worse. The primary purpose of this article is to combine four perspectives on urban conditions, each portraying a different spatial view. The first perspective can be likened to an aerial photograph where we look at how central cities relate to their surrounding metropolitan areas. For this purpose, we have updated the composite index used in our earlier work that contrasts social and economic conditions in cities with their outlying suburbs. I The second perspective focuses on central cities

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The best book is the best book for each of us as discussed by the authors, and we offer the best here to read, after deciding how your feeling will be, you can enjoy to visit the link and get the book.
Abstract: We present here because it will be so easy for you to access the internet service. As in this new era, much technology is sophistically offered by connecting to the internet. No any problems to face, just for this day, you can really keep in mind that the book is the best book for you. We offer the best here to read. After deciding how your feeling will be, you can enjoy to visit the link and get the book.


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In the early 1950s, strategy emerged in the United States as a new field with a distinct intellectual personality as mentioned in this paper, and a small group of men -Bernard Brodie, Thomas Schelling, Albert Wohlstetter, and a handful of others working mainly at the RAND Corporation, had moved into an intellectually barren "no-man's land" traditionally neglected by both military officers and students of international politics.
Abstract: In the 1950s, strategy emerged in the United States as a new field with a distinct intellectual personality. A small group of men -Bernard Brodie, Thomas Schelling, Albert Wohlstetter, and a handful of others working mainly at the RAND Corporation, had moved into an intellectually barren "no-man's land" traditionally neglected by both military officers and students of international politics.I The body of thought they created was very different from anything that had come before. Their ideas would prove to be enormously influential, and their style of analysis in large measure became the sophisticated way of approaching nuclear issues in the United States. The aim here is not simply to offer yet another description of this body of thought. The real goal is to try to give some sense for how this intellectual tradition took the shape it did what caused it to emerge, how the central ideas developed, and why, after an extraordinary period of intellectual productivity, these ideas by around 1966 or so seemed to have played themselves out. Why, in other words, did strategy hit something of a dead end in the late 1960s? The focus will be on the basic tension that dominated the development of this set of ideas. It was as though the coming of the hydrogen bomb in 1952 had released two great shock waves in the world of strategic thought. There was on the one hand the fundamental point that when both the United States and the Soviet Union had obtained survivable and deliverable strategic forces, all-out war between these two powers would become an absurdity: with thermonuclear weapons, the overriding goal had to be to limit war, and in particular to reduce to a minimum the risk that the nuclear powers would launch massive attacks on each other's cities.




Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors argue that the emergent model of political oversight, which advocates centralized presidential control over agency policy making while prescribing a passive role for Congress, ignores key goals of our political system as well as important external influences and internal constraints that shape institutional behavior.
Abstract: The continued delegation of policy-making authority to the bureaucracy has made the administrative process a primary arena for competition between the American president and Congress. The fact that the president has been winning consistently in recent years thus has important implications both for the character of policy making and for the distribution of power within our political system. This article is concerned with innovations in theory that have provided impetus and justification for this development. As an exercise in institutional analysis, it integrates normative considerations of good and constitutionally-sound policy making with an empirical assessment of executive and legislative competence. We argue that the emergent model of political oversight, which advocates centralized presidential control over agency policy making while prescribing a passive role for Congress, ignores key goals of our political system as well as important external influences and internal constraints that shape institutional behavior. A theory of oversight properly reconciled with the reality of agency policy making must allow for a direct congressional role in the administrative process as a counterpoise to executive power. Oversight issues were once much simpler than they are today. As discussed in the first section, the traditional model of public administration yielded an elegant set of prescriptions for institutional control of the bureaucracy in which formal



Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: Wilson's contributions to American public administration are often bad-mouwed as discussed by the authors, and it is fast becoming fashionable today to bad-mouth the contributions of scholar-president Woodrow Wilson to public administration.
Abstract: It is fast becoming fashionable today to bad-mouth the contributions of scholar-president Woodrow Wilson to American public administration. To be sure, everyone acknowledges that his 1887 essay, "The Study of Administration," published in Political Science Quarterly, was a significant starting point of some kind. 1 For example, Leonard D. White, the preeminent public-administration scholar of the pre-World War II era, wrote that "the study of administration . . . dates from the brilliant essay by Woodrow Wilson."2 Dwight Waldo, arguably the most important public-administration scholar of the pre-World War II era, has referred to Wilson's essay as "the most important document in the development of the field."3 As Robert T. Golembiewski has put it, "Virtually everyone agrees that Woodrow Wilson's 'The Study of Administration' constitutes the birth certificate of the modern study of public administration."4 One could offer a long list of such accolades. Nevertheless, Wilson's standing

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The role played by federal and state governmental bodies as organizational entities in helping to build the current women's movement is explored in this article, where the authors consider the role of women in the women's resurgence.
Abstract: Many aspects of the women's movement's resurgence have been ably considered. These include its political history,1 social forces that gave rise to the movement,2 and insights of key women involved in advancing women's status.3 Other works comprehensively recount issues involved in the movement,4 or cover the development of particular governmental policies.5 However, one aspect remains largely unexplored: the role played by federal and state governmental bodies as organizational entities in helping to build the current women's movement.6 Gov-

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: Solidarity was one of the largest social movements in history as mentioned in this paper, and it threatened the very foundations of communist rule in Poland, leading the government to suspend the union's activities and declare martial law in December 1981.
Abstract: Poland's Solidarity was one of the largest social movements in history. For sixteen months following its birth in the workers' strikes in the summer of 1980, it dramatically altered the face and teinper of Poland. Because of its size and popularity, it threatened the very foundations of communist rule in Poland. This led the government to suspend the union's activities and declare martial law in December 1981. Since then, Solidarity has continued in a truncated, weakened and illegal form. But a new wave of workers' strikes in the spring and summer of 1988, plus pressure from the Gorbachev leadership in the Soviet Union, led the regime to move toward renewed legalization of the organization. This powerful social movement, dormant for seven years, has reemerged once again to challenge the way Poland is ruled. It is important, therefore, to understand the origins and nature of Solidarity. During its legal existence, Solidarity was formally identified as a trade union, but in fact was then and still is as much a social movement as a trade union. The organization defined itself as a movement, and many of its mermbers, especially its activists, considered it a social movement. But the organization also fit the more objective sociological criteria for a social movement as "socially shared activities and beliefs directed toward the demand for change in some aspect of the social order."' The "socially shared activities" suggests group action, but does not necessarily imply a formal organization. Solidarity was such a group action, based on widely held dissatisfaction with the status quo in Polish society. It challenged the

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The current Japanese constitution was not produced by an elite group of clan oligarchs and then octroyed or issued in 1889 by the emperor as a fait accompli.
Abstract: Unlike the constitution of the Empire of Japan, commonly called the Meiji Constitution after the Meiji emperor, the current Japanese constitution was not produced by an elite group of clan oligarchs and then octroyed or issued in 1889 by the emperor as a fait accompli. Neither was the current constitution produced by a learned constitutional commission or a national or constituent assembly convened as a result of a popular vote or otherwise selected for the purpose of drafting a constitution, submitting it to the electorate for ratification, with or without power to govern in the meantime, and then dissolving when and if the new constitution was approved by the electorate. On the contrary, the national legislature that adopted the current constitution consisted of one house chosen under the Meiji Constitution by direct popular vote and another house composed of nobles, peers, and persons appointed by the emperor and others elected by the biggest taxpayers. The legislature continued to sit with an equally obsolescent privy council for the primary purpose of enacting a series of vitally important statutes designed to conform the law codes of the land to the principles of the new fundamental law. Men of letters, journalists, and one national commission of inquiry have concluded that the current constitution was imposed by the Americans upon the Japanese, and have condemned the constitutional process that was followed as coer-

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare the growth rate at which government has grown in different nations to determine whether American government is growing faster or slower than average, and thus, whether it is becoming more like other mixed-economy welfare states, or increasingly exceptional.
Abstract: Statements about government involve implicit or explicit comparison. Studies of the growth of government make within-nation comparisons of the present and past size of government.I But concentration upon one particular country limits the capacity for generalization. Comparing the size of governments in different advanced industrial societies provides a standard for measuring the size of government relative to its national product; by this standard a country with a small population such as Sweden can have a bigger government than countries with the population of the United States or Japan. Comparing the rate at which government has grown in different nations provides a standard for determining whether American government is growing faster or slower than average, and thus, whether it is becoming more like other mixed-economy welfare states, or increasingly exceptional. TWo quotations from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835) illustrate the widespread ambivalence about the political economy of the United States.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: A War of Words and Words of War: The Purge and the Isolationists Writing the Rhetoric Appendix: Chronology of Fireside Chats Endnotes Bibliography Speech Index Index Index as mentioned in this paper
Abstract: Preface Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Rhetorical President Roosevelt's Persuasive Delivery FDR and the Media: Newsreels, and Press Four Campaigns to the People Inaugurating the Presidency Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court A War of Words and Words of War: The Purge and the Isolationists Writing the Rhetoric Appendix: Chronology of Fireside Chats Endnotes Bibliography Speech Index Index


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: For example, this paper pointed out that the United States Constitution has changed little during the past two hundred years, while society, economy, and government itself changed a great deal, not so the formal statement of powers and prerogatives that legitimates the national government's form and functioning.
Abstract: Why has the United States Constitution changed so little during the past two hundred years? While society, economy, and government itself changed a great deal, not so the formal statement of powers and prerogatives that legitimates the national government's form and functioning. Much of the ongoing liberal-conservative debate over government has been rooted in uncertainty over the constitutional limits of opportunity and obligation. However, even moments of partisan triumph have seldom led to efforts to reduce the ambiguity of the document. Why has the American political system shied away from one of 1787's significant innovations, Article V, the provision for amending the Constitution by specified and not impossibly difficult procedures? Article V was born amid talk of the right of revolution against unsatisfactory government and consciousness of the value of providing a constitutional alternative to rebellion. "That useful alterations will be suggested by experience could not but be foreseen," explained James Madison in The Federalist, No. 43. "It was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing them should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards equally against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty, which might perpetuate its discovered faults."1 With Article V, the Founding Fathers acknowledged that their crea-