Description
Book SynopsisThe role of formal and informal institutional forces in changing three areas of U.S. public policy: privacy rights, civil rights and climate policyThere is no finality to the public policy process. Although it's often assumed that once a law is enacted it is implemented faithfully, even policies believed to be stable can change or drift in unexpected directions. The Fourth Amendment, for example, guarantees Americans' privacy rights, but the 9/11 terrorist attacks set off one of the worst cases of government-sponsored espionage. Policy changes instituted by the National Security Agency led to widespread warrantless surveillance, a drift in public policy that led to lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of wiretapping the American people. Much of the research in recent decades ignores the impact of large-scale, slow-moving, secular forces in political, social, and economic environments on public policy. In Policy Drift, Norma Riccucci sheds light on how institutional forces collect
Trade ReviewPolicy Drift is a timely and important book on how policies evolve and change after they are enacted. Norma Riccucci shows that, as time passes between enactment and initial implementation, policies can drift far from the apparent intent of their advocates. Riccucci demonstrates how the three branches of government and stakeholders continually jockey for influence over policy, while changes in broader political, economic, and social forces influence the relative power of contestants in policy making, often with profound consequences...a fresh and readable approach to the policy process. -- Thomas A. Birkland,Author of An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy
A welcome addition to a field largely constructed around a mechanistic view of policy, law and institutions. Norma Riccuccis attention to three significant policy areas surveillance and privacy rights, civil rights, and climate policy illustrates the surprises that are likely to emerge in an adaptive world that is more like the exploding universe than a two-dimensional assembly line. -- Beryl A. Radin,Author of Beyond Machiavelli: Policy Analysis Reaches Midlife
In Policy Drift, award winning author, Norma Riccucci, emphasizes that & governance unfolds overtime and that there is no one size fits all model of public policy formulation and implementation that will guarantee, predict, or explain policy durability, stability, and instability. Rather, there are a multiplicity of actors, institutions, conditions, and particularistic factors that contribute to policy drift. Riccuccis exceptionally well-crafted, cogent analysis provides an excellent framework for future theory building and research and is a very welcomeindeed, necessary--contribution to the fields of public administration and policy studies -- David H. Rosenbloom,Author of Administrative Law for Public Managers
