Agendas, alternatives, and public policies

Longman Classics in Political Science In reissuing classic works in political science, Longman celebrates the contributions its authors and their research have made to the discipline. The new Longman Classics in Political Science series honors these authors and their work. Providing students with an updated context, each title in the series includes a new foreword, written by one of todays top scholars, offering fresh, in-depth analysis of the book and its enduring contributions.   Kingdons book is an outstanding teaching tool about the policy process. I have used it in my undergraduate and graduate public policy seminars since its first publication and found it to be fresh and interesting to the students, always generating lively discussion about how issues get on the agenda.                                                                         from James A. Thurbers Foreword   Kingdons landmark work on agenda setting and policy formation is drawn from interview conducted with people in and around the U.S. federal government, and from case studies, government documents, party platforms, press coverage, and public opinion surveys. While other works examine how policy issues are decided, Kingdons book was the first to consider how issues got to be issues. This enduring work attempts to answer the questions: How do subjects come to officials attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an ideas time come when it does?   Longman is proud to announce that Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies has been reissued in this Longman Classics edition, featuring a new epilogue: Health Care Reform from Clinton to Obama. Comparing the Clinton administration in 1993 with the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010, Kingdon analyses how agenda setting, actors, and alternatives affect public policy.