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POLITICAL SCIENCE:

Public Policy

Government by Contract
Edited by Jody Freeman
Edited by Martha Minow
Explains the phenomenon and scope of government outsourcing and sets an agenda for future research attentive to workforce capacities as well as legal, economic, and political concerns.
Hardcover February 2009
Total Cure
Harold S. Luft
Proposals to reform the health care system typically focus on either increasing private insurance or expanding government-sponsored plans. Guaranteeing that everyone is insured, however, does not create a system with the quality of care patients want, the flexibility clinicians need, and the internal dynamics to continually improve the value of health care. Luft presents a comprehensive new proposal, SecureChoice, which does all that while providing affordable health insurance for every American.
Hardcover October 2008
Bending Science
Thomas O. McGarity
Wendy E. Wagner
McGarity and Wagner reveal the range of sophisticated legal and financial tactics political and corporate advocates use to discredit or suppress research on potential human health hazards.Bending Science exposes an astonishing pattern of corruption and makes a compelling case for reforms to safeguard both the integrity of science and the public health.
Hardcover May 2008
Chutes and Ladders
Katherine S. Newman
Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled, the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them in the low-wage labor market. In this timely volume, Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest families benefited from the tight labor markets and good economy in the late 1990s. More than a story of the shifting fortunes of the labor market, Chutes and Ladders asks probing questions about the motivations of low-wage workers, the dreams they have, and their understanding of the rules of the game.
Paperback April 2008
The Business of Lobbying in China
Scott Kennedy
Based on over 300 in-depth interviews with company executives, business association representatives, and government officials, this study identifies a wide range of national economic policies influenced by lobbying, including taxes, technical standards, and intellectual property rights. These findings have significant implications for how we think about Chinese politics and economics, as well as government-business relations in general.
Paperback March 2008
Policymaking in Latin America
Edited by Ernesto Stein
Edited by Mariano Tommasi
Edited by Carlos Scartascini
Edited by Pablo Spiller
What determines the capacity of countries to design, approve, and implement effective public policies? To address this issue, this book builds on the results of a comparative study of political institutions, policymaking processes, and policy outcomes in eight Latin American countries. The volume benefits from both micro detail on the intricacies of policymaking in individual countries and a broad cross-country interdisciplinary analysis of the process in the region.
Paperback March 2008
China's Trapped Transition
Minxin Pei
In a book sure to provoke debate, Minxin Pei examines the sustainability of the Chinese Communist Party's reform strategy--pursuing pro-market economic policies under one-party rule. Combining powerful insights with empirical research, China's Trapped Transition offers a provocative assessment of China's future as a great power.
Paperback March 2008
On Nuclear Terrorism
Michael Levi
Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Surveying the broad universe of plots and defenses, this accessible account shows how a wide-ranging defense that integrates the tools of weapon and materials security, law enforcement, intelligence, border controls, diplomacy, and the military can multiply, intensify, and compound the possibility that nuclear terrorists will fail.
Hardcover November 2007
Worst-Case Scenarios
Cass R. Sunstein
Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. Sunstein explores these and other worst-case scenarios and how we might best prevent them in this vivid, illuminating, and highly original analysis.
Hardcover November 2007
The Tyranny of the Market
Joel Waldfogel
Economists have long counseled reliance on markets rather than on government to decide a wide range of questions, in part because allocation through voting can give rise to a "tyranny of the majority." Markets, by contrast, are believed to make products available to suit any individual, regardless of what others want. But the argument is not generally correct. In markets, you can't always get what you want. This book explores why this is so and its consequences for consumers with atypical preferences.
Hardcover October 2007
From the Puritans to the Projects
Lawrence J. Vale
From the almshouses of seventeenth-century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing in Boston and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years.
Paperback September 2007
The Sandbox Investment
David L. Kirp
The rich have always valued early education, and for the past forty years, millions of poorer kids have had Head Start. Now, more and more middle class parents have realized that a good preschool is the smartest investment they can make in their children's future in a competitive world. Writing with the verve of a magazine journalist and the authority of a scholar, Kirp makes the ideal guide to this quiet movement and campaign.
Hardcover August 2007