Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Longman Classics Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science)

Longman Classics in Political Science

In reissuing classic works in political science, Longman celebrates the contributions its authors and their research have made to the discipline. The new Longman Classics in Political Science series honors these authors and their work. Providing students with an updated context, each title in the series includes a new foreword, written by one of today’s top scholars, offering fresh, in-depth analysis of the book and its enduring contributions.

“Kingdon’s book is an outstanding teaching tool about the policy process. I have used it in my undergraduate and graduate public policy seminars since its first publication and found it to be fresh and interesting to the students, always generating lively discussion about how issues get on the agenda.”

                                                                        –from James A. Thurber’s Foreword

Kingdon’s landmark work on agenda setting and policy formation is drawn from interview conducted with people in and around the U.S. federal government, and from case studies, government documents, party platforms, press coverage, and public opinion surveys. While other works examine how policy issues are decided, Kingdon’s book was the first to consider how issues got to be issues. This enduring work attempts to answer the questions: How do subjects come to officials’ attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an idea’s time come when it does?

Longman is proud to announce that Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies has been reissued in this Longman Classics edition, featuring a new epilogue: Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama. Comparing the Clinton administration in 1993 with the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010, Kingdon analyses how agenda setting, actors, and alternatives affect public policy.

Updated in a new 2^nd edition, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies has been reissued in this Longman Classics edition, featuring a new epilogue: Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama. Comparing the Clinton administration in 1993 with the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010, Kingdon analyses how agenda setting, actors, and alternatives affect public policy.

CHAPTER 1. How Does an Idea’s Time Come?

CHAPTER 2. Participants on the Inside of Government

CHAPTER 3. Outside of Government, but Not Just Looking In

CHAPTER 4. Processes: Origins, Rationality, Incrementalism, and Garbage Cans

CHAPTER 5. Problems

CHAPTER 6. The Policy Primeval Soup

CHAPTER 7. The Political Stream

CHAPTER 8. The Policy Window, and Joining the Streams

CHAPTER 9. Wrapping Things Up

CHAPTER 10. Some Further Reflections

EPILOGUE.  Health Care Reform in the Clinton and Obama Administrations