Seeking the Center

Martin Levin, Marc Landy, and Martin Shapiro have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to explain how politics shaped policy during the past decade. Their analyses - informative, insightful, and original - develop a common theme: despite partisan upheavals and conflict in Washington, continuity and moderation best characterize the evolution of ... national policies. This splendid collection is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand ... how political ideas, institutions, and strategies shape major public policies in the United States. -- Gary Jacobson, University of California at San Diego Martin Levin, Marc Landy and Martin Shapiro have brought together a pleasing and provocative set of essays on politics and policy making. Taken together, they show the American 'center' poised for an incremental leap into the twenty-first century. -- Richard A. Brody, Stanford University The editors and their all-star cast persuasively argue that moderate policies can produce substantial change. Seeking the Center is an excellent 'one-stop-shop' describing and explaining American public policy at the turn of the [twenty-first] century. -- John J. Coleman, University of Wisconsin

Over the years, Democrats and Republicans each have received about fifty percent of the votes and controlled about half of the government, but this has not resulted in policy deadlock. This title analyzes policy outcomes in light of the frequent alternation in power among evenly divided parties.During the past decade, Democrats and Republicans each have received about fifty percent of the votes and controlled about half of the government, but this has not resulted in policy deadlock. Despite highly partisan political posturing, the policy regime has been largely moderate. Incremental, yet substantial, policy innovations such as welfare reform; deficit reduction; the North American Free Trade Agreement; and, the deregulation of telecommunications, banking, and agriculture have been accompanied by such continuities as Social Security and Medicare, the maintenance of earlier immigration reforms, and the persistence of many rights-based policies, including federal affirmative action. In "Seeking the Center", twenty-one contributors analyze policy outcomes in light of the frequent alternation in power among evenly divided parties. They show how the triumph of policy moderation and the defeat of more ambitious efforts, such as health care reform, can be explained by mutually supporting economic, intellectual, and political forces. Demonstrating that the determinants of public policy become clear by probing specific issues, rather than in abstract theorizing, they restore the politics of policymaking to the forefront of the political science agenda. A successor to Martin A. Levin and Marc K. Landy's influential "The New Politics of Public Policy" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), this book will be vital reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in political science and public policy, as well as a resource for scholars in both fields.