Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Longman Classics Edition)

This book was used as the underlying basis to understanding the policy process in my graduate level class that I took recently. Overall I would give this book 5 stars because it is relatively thorough and it encompasses a great deal in a concise model that is easy to understand. Kingdon discusses that his model is set within three streams, problem, policy and political. Each of these streams have their own unique characteristics that work to help merge with the others. When these streams, ideally all three, a policy window opens where action on policy can occur by a decision-making body such as Congress. With the help of policy entrepreneuers, national mood, policy communities, and much more as agents amongst these streams, each work to produce change on the agenda. As this class was titled the policy process that I took, it explained how it began but this book does not cover how the process moves once something has been acted upon on the agenda. If you are looking for understanding more about activity leading up to action, this is a great book. If you are looking to understand the process afterwards, this may not be the right book, but it will help you understand the forces leading up to a process of change. Definitely, I would recommend this for any political science class at the undergraduate level. I am glad that I was fortunate enough to have it assigned in my grad level policy process class.

Agenda setting, in the world of politics, is when a problem becomes identified as an issue that calls for government attention, discussion, and--possibly--decision making. This book is one of the most important works on agenda-setting. John Kingdon has stated that: Political events flow along according to their own dynamics and their own rules. Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and interest groups of various descriptions press (or fail to press) their demands on government. The author sees three streams that must come together for an issue to be placed on the agenda--a political stream (just noted above), a policy stream (in which some policy proposal emerges as "best"), and a problem stream (a problem develops that people label as important). If they come together and if the window of opportunity for success is there, then the issue can become an agenda item. If the streams do not come together, agenda placement is unsuccessful--as with President Clinton's health care plan. That plan had two of three requirements in place. One, the political stream was supportive. A new President had been elected with his party having a majority in both houses of Congress; furthermore, Clinton outlined as a campaign issue support for a more ambitious health care program for Americans. The confluence of these two factors produced something like a "mandate" for change. Two, the problem stream saw health care bubbling up toward the top. That is, increasingly, people seemed to define health care as a serious problem about which something had to be done. Nonetheless, no major initiative emerged to be fully considered. Clinton's plan was very nearly DOA (dead on arrival) once serious discussion began. Why? No single policy proposal garnered enough support. Democrats supported several different plans--such as a single payer system (in which government becomes the insurer), "pay or play" (in which businesses would largely fund health care insurance), and the Clinton plan itself (which focused on managed care). Thus, the policy stream never did "come together" around any single proposal. As a result, the initiative died and no substantial changes were forthcoming in the health care system. What emerges in each stream is, to a large extent, "contingent," depending upon many factors--including chance. The result is unpredictability. It may be that this work overemphasizes chance and contingency and underplays the role of human agency (for instance, the role of policy entrepreneurs who labot to get issues placed on the agenda and acted upon). Nonetheless, this is an exemplary work and well worth attending to if one is interested in setting the political agenda.

Kingdon has produced an innovative and useful theory of the policy process. This book is clearly not intended for the lay reader, but for political scientists and policy specialists interested in theorizing about policy formation. Kingdon's writing style is somewhat formal, and at times stiff, but the book is easy to get through. Kingdon provides many concrete examples of the ideas he discusses, making the abstract principles easier to understand. Recommended for classes on the policy process, especially in conjunction with Baumgarter and Jones' Agendas and Instability in American Politics.

I am in the graduate program at American University's School of Public Affairs. This book was required for one of the core classes. The theory--the dynamic, fluid model that Kingdon builds in this book has been practically adopted as THE mantra within policy formation/agenda setting research. The book is well organized and easy to follow. It is not a challenging read but I found sections of the book to be a bit dry. Also, be ready to contend with literally hundreds of fluid metaphors that Kingdon employs throughout the book.

In this very readable book, Kindgon provides an insightful perspective on how agendas are set and public policies made in the government. Using the "garbage can model" as the basis and starting point, Kindgon develops his "policy window" concept of policy making that has three fundamental components: problems, policies, and politics. Each component has a life of its own and is independent from each other. The concept of "policy entrepreneurs" is also introduced.I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in public policy formulation.