This incisive book examines how and why some major policy reforms endure while others fail to gain traction and embed themselves. Tracing the development of key policy reforms over time, it offers original insight into how to create and embed positive changes that continue to deliver over the long term.

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.

Distinguished historian Hall presents a revelatory account of New England's Puritans that shows them to have been the most daring and successful reformers of the Anglo-colonial world.

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chine

Offering a fresh take on the endless battles over school reform, in Beyond the Education Wars journalist, bestselling author, and business professor Andrea Gabor argues that despite being championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad, the market-based changes and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today's school reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster - and at odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies as well. A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform, Beyond the Education Wars makes clear that what's needed is not more grand ideas, but practical ways to grow the great ones schools already have.

This incisive book examines how and why some major policy reforms endure while others fail to gain traction and embed themselves. Tracing the development of key policy reforms over time, it offers original insight into how to create and embed positive changes that continue to deliver over the long term. Combining insights from policy studies, policy feedback and government performance, this book focuses on education and environmental reforms in parliamentary democracies. It builds on previous studies of how reforms are designed and passed, advancing academic and policy knowledge on the trajectories of reforms post-implementation. Drawing on detailed case studies from Australia, Canada, Ireland and Sweden, chapters argue that for reforms to endure, the twin challenges of preservation and adaptation must be recognised and managed. The book shows endurance to be contingent, conditional and contested, progressing non-linearly and dependent on political parties, administrative actors, sectoral interests and mass publics for success. Students and scholars interested in public policy, administration, governance and management will find this book a fascinating read. Using empirical analyses to give novel insight into the workings of government, it will also be an invaluable guide for policymakers and public administrators.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig investigates the most vexing problem in American democracy: how money corrupts our nation's politics, and the critical campaign to stop it. In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature. With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts theissues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness. While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In Republic Lost, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.