Public Policy Under Blair, edited by Stephen P. Savage and Rob Atkinson, is designed to "provide a broad assessment of policies under British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his style of government, New Labour (sometimes called the Third Way)". It is also designed to compare and contrast Blair's ideas with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Mostly an informational text, and not written as a subjective viewpoint, Public Policy is mainly designed for the researcher or the university-level student, and not for the casual reader looking for some exciting weekend reading.

What is unique about this text is that different authors write each of the chapters. Savage and Atkinson act as authors and editors at the same time in this text, and different experts write chapters on their fields of research. The text deals with two main ideas. Part One examines policy through a range of generic factors that have influenced the agenda (including 'Blairism') and the changing of government structure. Part Two addresses different specific parts of policy (e.g. Environmental Policy, Education) and how they have changed under Thatcher and Blair. (Preface, p. ix)
As I stated before, this text is designed mostly for researchers, college students or professional public servants. People that do not have a very strong background in British public policy or government will have a tough time reading this text and understanding the material. Most readers of this text come into the experience expecting very concise and detailed information, and that's what you get. But since I was looking for very general and simple explanations to complex issues, I had problems with the text. Although that may have been contributed to by my lack of knowledge, I had additional difficulties with the format of the text itself.

While Public Policy tries to maintain a steady flow of information on how Blair has implemented the policies of the Labour government, I often got lost in the constant and confusing notations. It is well understood that notations are quite necessary and appropriate for this work, but for certain authors, I found that it got in the way of what was actually being presented. I found it hard to follow an author's statement for a certain approach to an area of policy when every other line had a notation or citation in it.

It is quite understandable that university-level students in the United Kingdom would normally use this collection of essays, so the language and references would be geared towards them. But when a work such as this is geared toward British citizens, it is quite predictable that Americans would have problems with the references. I did. When I was reading through the text, I ran across terms such as a "white paper". Having gone through many discussions with fellow students on policy matters, I have had some exposure to this term. But later on, I stumbled across "green papers", "government papers", and references to the Northcote - Trevelyan Report of 1854. However, if the editors would have put a glossary of terms in the back, there would not have been such a problem, because I dare anyone to find many people in Britain or the US that could tell you what the Northcote - Trevelyan Report of 1854 actually said. The glossary would serve inexperienced readers as well as professional historians, and that would have made this text better.

It was quite obvious as well that some authors seemed to lean towards a certain point of view. Massey in particular seems to lean towards the right due to his constant attacks on the policies that Blair has implemented. "The idea of some dirigiste plan is one that is itself an approach replete with unhappy experiences for the last Labour Prime Minister who attempted it in the mid-1960s." (p. 29) The only credit that Massey gives to Labour is that the recently published Modernising Government White Paper is trying to emphasize "Citizen-focused" approaches to public services. Even then, the credit is brief.

The problems that I had with the text stemmed from my lack of knowledge going into the reading and with the format of the text itself. But with my problems set aside, there are bright spots that really make this work shine.

It was quite a task to me to read essays full of information and theory about abstract subjects, but as I said before, that's what the style of the text is. But at the end of the text, I came across "British Policy in Northern Ireland", written by Arthur Aughey. This chapter caught my eye since it covered a topic that has been covered extensively in the news, and contains information that could actually help me understand the conflict more. The chapter started with the history of peace agreements and how they have been attempted in the last 15 years, which gave an outstanding yet simple insight into what has been tried. It also gives some insight into what Tony Blair thinks of the whole matter. Aughey outlines The Belfast Agreement superbly as he describes the Assembly that will cover matters devolved to it and how the Agreement "fits the Blair project of social inclusiveness". What makes me point this chapter out is the smooth flow of ideas, and how it pertains to something that most Americans know about. In addition, it may affect someone's life here in America, and that makes all look at something twice.

In conclusion, I hope that I was able to point out the errors that I had reading this text without making judgments on the content, since I am in no position whatsoever to make those kinds of accusations without being an expert myself. Most of the text was pretty dry, but it was informational. There were points that really grasped my attention and taught me something worthwhile, and that's what I will remember for a long time. So for its targeted audience (while keeping in consideration my complaints), Public Policy does a commendable, but not outstanding job.

I wouldn't spend any money on this book. The theory espoused in this book is so far from reality, it isn't funny.

This book promotes the notion that "free enterprise" must be inserted into public transit so as to maximize the benefits to passengers and society at large.

However, this notion is demonstrably wrong.

For example, local bus operations in British cities outside of London were completely de-regulated in the 1980's by the national Tory government, e.g., public funding was almost entirely cut off and private bus companies were allowed to compete freely against one another (as opposed to "privatization" in the U.S. which has mainly meant a public agency putting service out to competitive bid). Regional pass schemes allowing passengers to freely transfer from one route or operator to another were abolished.

The results are conclusive. Bus patronage in British cities dropped more than 30% by the early 1990's. In London, bus patronage over the same period actually increased somewhat, despite major cuts in subsidy funding. The difference was that London retained regional governmental control of fare and service decisions, despite putting much of the service out to bid.

The disaster of British local bus de-regulation has also been repeated in spades by the ill-considered "privatization" of British Rail. Rail privatization has been a big enough disaster to become one of the hottest public issues in Great Britain.

The successes obtained by "centralized" regional planning and decision-making authority in elected government hands is quite conclusive in other countries. In Zurich, per capita transit usage is among the highest in the developed world, exceeding a number of Japanese cities. Zurich's success--in one of the most affluent, high auto-owning urban areas on the planet--is based on centralized planning at the canton level, plus generous government funding. Zurich has managed to retain very high transit market share despite rapid motorization since the 1960's. The reasons that Toronto, Canada's past success with generating high transit usage levels, are essentially the same as Zurich, though the current pseudo-free market provincial government in Ontario is too boorish to understand this.

"Free market" economists like Klein often cite the "success" of private transit in Southeast Asia; however, those "capitalist" bastions of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia have relied on centralized planning and sufficient funding to allow new transit systems to function through selective privatization, but not anywhere near the model that Klein espouses. In effect, government transportation policies in Hong Kong and Singapore guarantee the transit market (e.g., car use is restricted, heavily taxed). The Zurich and Toronto models have proven to be less authoritarian.

Klein proves how blinkered economists--particularly those who espouse "libertarian" views ("new right" in British and Australian terms)--are very shortsighted about public transit and other similar public policy issues.

For one of the few books that I've seen that "gets it right," I recommend "A Very Public Solution" by Paul Mees, a professor of Planning and Public Policy at Melbourne University, Melboune, Australia (yes, Amazon carries it).

Mee's point about urban transit is best summed up by this from one of my unpublished papers:

Flexibility would be the greatest benefit of improved transit to "transit dependents" and would-be "choice" users. This is clearly explained by the book "A Very Public Solution" (Page 289; Dr. Paul Mees, Melbourne University Press, 2000. Melbourne, Australia):

(Mees' excerpt):

With public transport itself, the critical issue is flexibility. And the key to flexibility for passengers is simplicity and predictability, not a bewildering array of constantly changing options. The latter produces confusion, not convenience. Paradoxically, to be flexible, public transport must also be rigidly predictable: perhaps the best analogy is with the road system, rather than with cars themselves...

This means that frequent service on an easy-to-understand, predictable, and reliable network of regional and local transit services delivers vastly superior flexibility to the customer. Such transit systems typically service a far higher percentage of "choice" patronage. Compared to an infrequent, specialized, hard to understand jumble of routes, such transit networks compete successfully with automobiles.

A Very Public Solution's prime case study is Toronto, Canada. Toronto has significantly higher per transit usage per capita than many European cities, an order of magnitude higher than most U.S. urban areas. Toronto's exceptionally high transit use occurs despite millions of residents living in dispersed suburbs essentially indistinguishable from the American norm. Canadian fuel prices are only slightly higher than the United States. There are more similarities than differences between Canadian and U.S. culture. Toronto's transit usage remain high, despite service cuts caused by an early 1990's recession.

"Curb Rights" tries to answer the problem of subsidized transit, but offers too much economic modeling, which would not necessarily work.

The book is founded on the theory of bus and jitney operators having rights to own the curb for bus stops. This brings about too much free market optimism, but very little assurance that public transit would actually be improved.

It's no surprise that free market public transit is advocated, one of the authors is from the Libertarian Party think tank, the Reason Foundation.

The authors also mention that in places where transit was deregulated, there was no survey on how riders actually felt about service before and after deregulation. So there is no guarantee about improvement.

There would be no need to take a "survey on how customers felt before and after deregulation." The "survey" would be expressed by customers voluntarily using the service, i.e. whether they were willing to purchase rides on deregulated transit vehicles. If customers were satisfied, the transit company would prosper. If not, they would go out of business and another company could enter the market and provide satisfactory service. That is the only survey that counts! If that's too much Econ 101 speculation, then you just don't get it!

This book is typical of planning theory books. They do not say much that is of any practical value. This book will tell you that it is important of build socially inclusive cities, but it will not tell you how. It has little of practical value. Rather than provide an alternative approach to city building that is socially and environmentally aware it does little more than rehash arguments against planning that have been around for 40 years.

Though Sandercock goes some way to recognising the importance of design in city building she still can't bring herself to engage meaningfully with new urbanist proposals or to make any design recommendations.

By concentrating on 'planning theory' it misses out on the rich traditions of planning practice. It has no photographs of real spaces or real cities, just words. Don't read this if you haven't already read "The Death and Life of the Great American City" or "A Pattern Language". Once you have read these other books you won't want to read this.

This book was for me an excelent discovering of the new planning from a multicultural approach. In some cases is repetitive, but have a very good selection of cases. I recommend it.

In these days of real terrorism, we need real books not rehashed grad school junk. Put this down and go for current journals. PL or PU?

There are only a few books that the scholar of "third world" nuclear doctrine will find helpful. This is one of the few. The chapter on Iraq's chemical arsenal, in partuclar, is very informative. This is not a history or even a strategic study of the dangers of proliferation. It is an attempt to understand how military doctrine integrates weapons of mass destruction in different institutional and political contexts. This edited volume is far from perfect, but it is the best broad survey of this particular subject.

This book is written in an academic style and format. Despite the exciting cover, it is *not* light reading, nor is it written for a popular audience.

Basically, each chapter is written by a different expert in the field. There's a chapter on terrorism, a chapter on the India-Pakistan nuclear dilemma, and so on.

I found this book to be fascinating because of the wealth of facts contained inside.

Is this book a page-turning thriller? Heck no! But is it full of useful research material and expert analyses seldom found elsewhere? You betcha.

Nearly every page of this book exudes this ivory-tower academic's desire for more socialism. In effect, his solution to "the trouble with government" is more government, higher taxes, more support and loyal allegiance from the proletariat, and less personal liberty and freedom.

He praises professional politicians, impressed at how well informed they are about issues near and dear to his heart. (No wonder; the issues near and dear to Mr. Bok's heart involve big government programs, socialistic wealth redistribution, and grand societal architectural schemes that are near and dear to every power-loving politician.)

Bok never questions the basic premise that we need big government. He claims that as we have come to depend on the State to meet so many of our needs, our welfare depends more than ever on how well our government performs. Wouldn't it be nice to see instead a realistic exploration of how much better off we'd be if we didn't depend on the State to meet so many of our needs; if we had much lower taxes, more money to meet those needs ourselves, more time and money to support charities that can more effectively address societal issues than tired, failed government megaprograms.

Bok acknowledges that government is ubiquitous and involved in every facet of our lives, yet his view of "the trouble with government" isn't that it's too invasive, but that it's not invasive enough and isn't always run by the most effective bureaucrats. He claims that a shoddy performance by public officials today can mean:

* inadequate schooling for children (alternative suggestion: vouchers, or even get the government out of the education business entirely),

* hunger for needy families (alternative suggestions: quit trying to increase the size of a government that already consumes half of our nation's production and we'll have a lot more individual wealth available to solve problems for ourselves and our neighbors, and quit building a government so large that everyone comes to expect it to solve their problems instead of taking personal responsibility),

* sluggish growth or even a recession for our economy (sounds like the old discredited Keynesian theories that the only way to have prosperity is for the government to orchestrate it), and

* substandard health care (again, his implication is that only through government can we have good health care).

If you are a bleeding heart liberal, you'll probably enjoy this book.

If you believe in liberty and personal responsibility, however, this is just another book to add to the list of liberal mumbo-jumbo that you won't want to waste your time reading. It's further evidence that all the education in the world won't necessarily produce an author with common sense and an understanding of how a free society should operate.

Author ignores heterogeneous nature of the US, both geographically and ethnicly, comparing the US to smaller and less populous democracies elsewhere. He also fudges the poverty level concept: whereas senior citizen households are almost entirely composed of one or two people, households below the poiverty level which include children show three, four or more persons trying to live on an income sufficient ONLY for one or two, and alleviating this siituation (voluntary on the part of the parents) would only condemn future generations to bare existence levels by encouraging this prolific breeding by those who cannot adequately support their offspring. He also does not give due weight to the immigration (legal or illegal) of millions of workers qualified only for manual labor, which depresses the wage levels at the low end; he should observe the day labor lineups which occur in all of our metropolitan areas, to realize that these people just do not work every day and it is impossible to sustain a family on such work. An oversupply!

This book's title immediately caught my attention. Currently many of us are not totally enamored with the present state of affairs in both the federal government and national politics. After completing the book, I am convinced that its title is somewhat misleading. Bok ultimately is not totally persuasive in that the real source is "Trouble With Government;" but instead his major conclusion is that the trouble is with us, the U.S. electorate.

Bok, Harvard President Emeritus, presents a very well researched and articulated analysis of the shortcomings of present day government. However, if you looking for highly entertaining big-ticket recommendations on how to improve government, you will not find them here. Instead, the book seems directed toward the more informed student of government and politics, who is seeking a comprehensive and well thought out analysis.

I found Bok's more academic approach and style in sharp contrast to Robert Reich's recent work, The Future of Success, which is an analysis of our current economy. In the latter, Reich is more entertaining and captivating with perhaps more mass appeal. Bok's style, on the other hand, is more intellectual and ultimately attractive to the political or social scientist type.

The Trouble With Government is Bok's companion volume to the State of the Nation, which was published in 1996. He begins with an empirical analysis, which shows the U.S. lagging behind other advanced democracies in several key quality of life indicators. In his search for the cause of these shortcomings, he first looks at the "usual suspects," which are politicians, political parties, the media and special interests. Instead of these culprits, Bok maintains the problem lies with poorly designed legislation, burdensome regulation, and the neglect of working-class interests and failed antipoverty policies. For each of these he offers his own solutions. For the most part, Bok's solutions are attainable and not too far-reaching. His recommendations would not require dramatic structural change to our existing political system. Conversely, some seem rather idealistic and romantic such as increased civic education and a call for added national community service. Ultimately, Bok places much of the root cause squarely on the backs of the general populous. Our own disinterest and disengagement are seen as the ultimate culprits. In Bok's own words we end up with the type of government we deserve. This is certainly a message worthy of our attention.

This book has been widely touted, so I talked two other political scientists into plowing through it for our reading group. We found the book to be a major disappointment.

The authors have an argument to make, but the quality of their qualitative and quantitative evidence is at best uneven. The survey analysis seldom includes multivariate tests and the interview sources, while extensive, are episodically not comprehensively analyzed. By the end of the book, we had little confidence that the conclusions the authors presented were well supported by their evidence.

It's a readable book, but it is difficult to put much faith in
its conclusions.

Reading this book, one phrase kept floating to mind - dash it all. I think..... well, I don't know. This book, er, doesn't do justice to the concept of intercounty by-elections, what?

This is a wide-ranging, theoretically rich and empirically focused look at whether politicians simply "follow" the polls or whether politicians use polls to help "sell" proposals to the public. The answer is both, of course, but Jacobs and Shapiro explain how and why public leaders develop their own policy views, and how the public's acceptance of those views shape how policies are ultimately formed. Politicians are "trustees" in the Burkean sense, but how they explain their actions have to be placed in a "delegate" framework. Their case study on health care policy is especially instructive. This book won the 2001 Goldsmith Book Prize, it should be read by serious students of the media and politics.

Krieger's British Politics in the Global Age, is not much more than an incoherant portrait of modern UK politics. Krieger goes into an ill-advised depiction of several differnt forms of social democracy, while at the same time attempting to address the problems of contemporary Labour Party politics. One is left by the end of the work confused and disoriented about what Krieger's exact position is after having been bombarded with chapter after chapter of incoherant drivel. If you really wish to gain some idea about what Krieger is actualy trying to get across to the reader -- just reader the outline in the back of the work, anything more is purely a waste of time.

After reading _The Power Broker_, I was expecting a similar expose of the power politics that went in to San Francisco's redevelopment. _City for Sale_ did not live up to my expectations. Hartman's style is very dry and he gives us very little insight into the people who were involved in the battles that shaped modern San Francisco. He relies almost exclusively on secondary or tertiary sources and presents too much information without distilling and analyzing it.

Hartman spends little more than a page on San Francisco's public transit woes. He ignores the development of BART - which operates almost exclusively as a conduit for suburban workers to go to and from the financial district and serves virtually none of San Francisco's neighborhoods. He also offers little insight into the city's homeless problem - people are drawn to San Francisco because it is the only city in the area that pash cash to homeless people.

I was most disappointed that after Hartman spent 385 pages outlining how the city's business establishment had virtually controlled urban redevelopment for the last 30 years - he spends the last 15 pages trying to blame San Francisco's gentrification problems on computer programmers in their mid-20s. This book was written so recently and yet Hartman's analysis is already incorrect - silicon valley people in their mid-20s are no longer a threat to San Francisco - but the business interests downtown and in Pacific Heights who obviously created the mess still have the same control over the city's affairs.

i need them,well too little pages. hurry 3rd ed.

This book attempts to present public policy theories (incrementalism, group theory, elitism and so on) together with a number of concrete applications, in order to demonstrate how different theories highlights different aspects of policy making. It is not so much a matter of which theory is correct, but which theory is useful to analyze a certain issue. All this is of course very fine.

The problem with the book is that the theories are presented so briefly, and the analyses are so shallow, that the student cannot possibly get a good grasp of what is really going on. The basic concept "policy process" is not dealt with until chapter 14 (of 15 chapters)! Only 4 pages are devoted to the fundamental problem of agenda-setting. Further, the book lacks references to most of the exciting current litterature in the field. The interested student will not find many suggestions on how to move on from this book.

The author seems to be much more interested in describing policies than analyzing them. Indeed, the book does offer some nice case studies on important American policy issues, like abortion, arms race, and nuclear power. These cases could perhaps be used as material for exercises, but look elsewhere for theory.

If you are looking for an introduction to theories of public policy I would recommend Howlett & Ramesh: "Studying Public Policy" instead of this book -- it is slightly older, but still more up-to-date. But if you want a 300-page description of American policies in different policy areas, then look no further.