Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity: Diversity and Drift (American Governance and Public Policy series) - Softcover

Aarts, Flor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1589010310 ISBN 13: 9781589010314

Publisher: Georgetown University Press, 2004

Synopsis

"Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity" integrates the study of politics and public policy across a broad spectrum of regulatory and social welfare policies in the United States and several nations of Western Europe. The editors and a sterling list of contributors look at policymaking in the 1990s through the present - providing a comparative politics framework - stressing both parallel development and the differences between and among the nations. Similar prevailing ideas and political factors can be identified and transatlantic comparisons made - providing for a clearer understanding of the policymaking process. Faith in regulated markets and the burden of rising welfare costs are concerns found on both sides of the Atlantic. Western democracies also share political climates colored by economic austerity; low trust in government, pressures from interest groups, and a sharply divided electorate. Because of differing political processes and differing policy starting points, a variety of disparate policy decisions have resulted. Real world policymaking in the areas of welfare, health, labor, immigration reform, disability rights, consumer and environmental regulation, administrative reforms, and corporate governance are compared. Ultimately, the last decade is best characterized as one of "drift", sluggish changes with little real innovation and much default to the private sector. In general, policymakers on both sides of the ocean, constrained by economic necessity, have been unable to produce policy outcomes that satisfy the key segments of the electorate. The contributors examine the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, as well as a number of other European countries, and study the European Union itself as a policymaking institution. "Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity" distills the prominent issues, politics, and roles played by governmental institutions into a new understanding of the dynamics of policymaking in and among transatlantic nations.

About this title

Review:

"One of the many virtues of the essays in this fine volume is that they are truly comparative: they examine the different ways the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, and the EU have responded to similar problems. Another is that they help us to understand how and why different institutional structures create different policy outcomes."

About the Author:

Martin A. Levin is a professor of political science and founding director of the Gordon Public Policy Center at Brandeis University, author of After the Cure: Managing AIDS and other Public Health Crises, and coeditor of The New Politics of Policymaking. Martin Shapiro is James W. and Isabel Coffroth Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Both are coeditors of Seeking the Center: Politics and Policymaking at the New Century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1589010310
• ISBN 13: 9781589010314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344
• Editor: Levin Martin A., Shapiro Martin