Princeton University Press
Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted
Key Metrics
- Eric M Patashnik
- Princeton University Press
- Paperback
- 9780691138978
- 9.1 X 6 X 0.7 inches
- 0.8 pounds
- Political Science > Public Policy - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Reforms at Risk is the first book to closely examine what happens to sweeping and seemingly successful policy reforms after they are passed. Most books focus on the politics of reform adoption, yet as Eric Patashnik shows here, the political struggle does not end when major reforms become enacted. Why do certain highly praised policy reforms endure while others are quietly reversed or eroded away?
Patashnik peers into some of the most critical arenas of domestic-policy reform--including taxes, agricultural subsidies, airline deregulation, emissions trading, welfare state reform, and reform of government procurement--to identify the factors that enable reform measures to survive. He argues that the reforms that stick destroy an existing policy subsystem and reconfigure the political dynamic. Patashnik demonstrates that sustainable reforms create positive policy feedbacks, transform institutions, and often unleash the ''creative destructiveness'' of market forces.
Reforms at Risk debunks the argument that reforms inevitably fail because Congress is prey to special interests, and the book provides a more realistic portrait of the possibilities and limits of positive change in American government. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wants to ensure that hard-fought reform victories survive.
Author Bio
Eric M. Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Political Science, and Chair, Department of Political Science.
Patashnik is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and the department of political science at Yale University.
During his time at UVA, he served as associate dean and acting dean at the Batten School. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books including Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017) and Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008).
He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and also won the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution during 1995-96, served as President of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and was the editor of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019.
Patashnik received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Source: Brown University
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