During the 2008 election season, politicians from both sides of the aisle promised to rid government of lobbyists’ undue influence. For the authors of Lobbying and Policy Change, the most extensive study ever done on the topic, these promises ring hollow—not because politicians fail to keep them but because lobbies are far less influential than political rhetoric suggests. Based on a comprehensive examination of ninety-eight issues, this volume demonstrates that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying. Why? The authors find that resources explain less than five percent of the difference between successful and unsuccessful efforts. Moreover, they show, these attempts must overcome an entrenched Washington system with a tremendous bias in favor of the status quo. Though elected officials and existing policies carry more weight, lobbies have an impact too, and when advocates for a given issue finally succeed, policy tends to change significantly. The authors argue, however, that the lobbying community so strongly reflects elite interests that it will not fundamentally alter the balance of power unless its makeup shifts dramatically in favor of average Americans’ concerns.

This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of implementation analysis in higher education and an extensive review of relevant recent literature. Coverage analyzes the effective and specific complexities of the implementation of higher education policies in several countries, including: Australia, Austria, Finland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

George Tsebelis’ veto players approach has become a prominent theory to analyze various research questions in political science. Studies that apply veto player theory deal with the impact of institutions and partisan preferences of legislative activity and policy outcomes. It is used to measure the degree of policy change and, thus, reform capacity in national and international political systems. This volume contains the analysis of leading scholars in the field on these topics and more recent developments regarding theoretical and empirical progress in the area of political reform-making. The contributions come from research areas of political science where veto player theory plays a significant role, including, positive political theory, legislative behavior and legislative decision-making in national and supra-national political systems, policy making and government formation. The contributors to this book add to the current scholarly and public debate on the role of veto players, making it of interest to scholars in political science and policy studies as well as policymakers worldwide.

This book beings with an attempt to clarify the notion of problem definition. The problem-definition task is placed in "policy-making arenas." In this context, problems are (implicitly and explicitly) defined so as to guide future policy, and to make sense out of past action. The second part examines the taken-for-granted complexity of public problems. A problem is rendered "complex" when solutions pursue conflicting or incompatible values. A new direction has to do with placing public organizations in the center of a utilization formula, in line with suggestions in the sociology of knowledge that view utilization as an organizational phenomenon.

How and why do policies change? The author addresses this question by examining the renewable electricity policies of five European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK) over the last thirty years. Employing a comparative approach that is qualitative yet consistent and rigorous, she describes how these countries' policies changed over time, whether incrementally or comprehensively, and shows how those changes may be explained, citing political, economic, social, and technological factors.

This book provides the reader with the full panoply of political economy tools and concepts necessary to understand, analyze, and integrate how political and social factors may influence the success or failure of their policy goals.

Thoroughly revised, reorganized, updated, and expanded, this widely-used text sets the balance and fills the gap between theory and practice in public policy studies. In a clear, conversational style, the author conveys the best current thinking on the policy process with an emphasis on accessibility and synthesis rather than novelty or abstraction. A newly added chapter surveys the social, economic, and demographic trends that are transforming the policy environment.