Policy Agendas in British Politics [Hardcover]

Using a unique dataset spanning fifty years of policy-making in Britain, this book traces how topics like the economy, international affairs, and crime have shifted in importance. It takes a new approach to agenda setting called focused adaptation, and sheds new light on key points of change in British politics, such as Thatcherism and New Labour.Preface and Acknowledgements 1.?The Policy Agenda and British Politics 2.?Policy-Making and British Politics? 3. Measuring the Policy Agenda: Policy, Public and Media in Britain? 4. Change and Stability in Executive and Legislative Agendas 5.?Policy Punctuations 6.?Structural Shifts in British Political Attention 7.?Public Opinion and the Policy Agenda 8.?The Media 9.?Budgets and Policy Implementation 10.?Conclusion References List of Tables and Figures

Policy Agendas in British Politics presents a novel overview of British politics and policy making across the past two generations. The authors carefully assess different depictions of the policy process, including incrementalism, partisan control theories, policy network theory, punctuated equilibrium, and the impact of particular leaders, and confront these theoretical approaches with a comprehensive and novel database constructed with painstaking work over the past many years. The result is a new understanding of the dynamics of British politics, one that tests rather than assumes the impact of such things as changes in Prime Ministerial leadership, external shocks, or institutional design. Further, the work allows the dynamics of British policy development to be put into a broad comparative perspective. The result of this impressive theoretical and empirical work is a new understanding of how the British government has evolved from 1945 to 2010. The impressive empirical work, combined with careful theorizing and attention to previous works of many types will guarantee a wide and well deserved audience in Britain and beyond.

Frank R. Baumgartnerlsª