Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Second Edition

When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States.

The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

"Agendas and Instability in American Politics reminds us that ideas, institutions, and (yes) politics all matter.... It is at once a grand synthesis of the past and a path-breaking work against which future studies will be measured." - American Political Science Review, on the first edition"

Frank R. Baumgartner is the Miller-LaVigne Professor of Political Science at Penn State University. Bryan D. Jones is the J. J. Pickle Chair in Congressional Studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. They are coauthors of several books, including The Politics of Attention, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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