PUBLIC POLICY COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS

Public Policy Core Reading List

Allison, Graham T. 1971. Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban missile crisis.
Boston: Little, Brown.
Bachrach, Peter and Morton S. Baratz. 1962. Two faces of power. American Political
Science Review. 56:4, 947-952.
Bardach, Eugene and Robert A. Kagan. 1982. Going by the book: the problem of
regulatory unreasonableness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Baumgartner, Frank R. and Bryan D. Jones. 2009. Agendas and instability in American
politics (2nd edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bemelmans-Videc, Marie-Louise, Ray C. Rist and Evert Vedung. 1998. Carrots, sticks
and sermons: policy instruments and their evaluation. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers.
Breyer, Stephen G. 1982. Regulation and its reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cohen, Michael D., James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. 1972. A garbage can model of
organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly. 17:1, 1-25.
Dryzek, John S. 1990. Discursive democracy: politics, policy, and political science. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Dorf, Michael and Charles F. Sabel. 1998. A constitution of democratic experimentalism.
Harvard Law Review.
Douglas, Mary and Aaron B. Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and culture: an essay on the
selection of technical and environmental dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fischer, Frank and John Forester. 1993. The argumentative turn in policy analysis and
planning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fung, Archon, Mary Graham and David Weil. 2007. Full disclosure: the perils and
promise of transparency. New York: Cambridge University Press, chapter 3.
Fung, Archon and Erik Olin Wright. 2003. Deepening democracy: institutional
innovations in empowered participatory governance. London: Verso.
Haas, Peter M. 1992. Epistemic communities and international policy coordination.
International Organization. 46:1, 1-35.
Hacker, Jacob S. 2002. The divided welfare state: the battle over public and private social
benefits in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hajer, Maarten A. and H. Wagenaar. 2003. Deliberative policy analysis: understanding
governance in the network society. Theories of institutional design. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Heclo, Hugh. 1978. Issue networks and the executive establishment. The New American
Political System. 87-124. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research.
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, voice and loyalty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 1990. The fifth branch: science advisers as policymakers. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Kingdon, John W. 2003. Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. Longman classics in
political science. New York: Longman.
 Lindblom, Charles E. 1959. The science of "muddling through". Public Administration
Review. 19:79-88.
Lindblom, Charles E. 1990. Inquiry and change: the troubled attempt to understand and
shape society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lowi, Theodore J. 1972. Four systems of policy, politics, and choice. Public
Administration Review. 32:4, 298-310.
McCubbins, Matthew D., Roger G.Noll and Barry R. Weingast. 1989. Structure and
process, politics and policy: administrative arrangements and the political control of agencies in
the US. Virginia Law Review. 75:431-482.
Melnick, R. Shep. 1994. Between the lines: interpreting welfare rights. Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution.
Mettler, Suzanne. 2005. Soldiers to citizens: the G.I. bill and the making of the greatest
generation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Moss, David A. 2002. When all else fails: government as the ultimate risk manager.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Perrow, Charles. 1999. Normal accidents: living with high-risk technologies. Princeton
paperbacks. x, 451 p. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Pressman, Jeffrey L. and Aaron Wildavsky. 1973. Implementation: how great
expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sabatier, Paul A. 2007. Theories of the policy process (2nd ed.). Theoretical lenses on
public policy. Boulder: Westview.
Sabel, Charles F. 1997. Design, deliberation and democracy: on the new pragmatism of
public and private institutions. Liberal institutions, economic constitutional rights, and the role
of organizations. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Sarnoff, Susan Kiss. 2001. Sanctified snake oil: the effect of junk science on public
policy. Westport: Praeger.
Schneider, Anne L. and Helen M. Ingram. 1997. Policy design for democracy. Studies in
government and public policy. xii, 241 p. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Schneider, Anne and Helen Ingram. 1993. Social construction of target populations:
implications for politics and policy. American Political Science Review. 87:2, 334-347.
Lieberman, Robert C. 1995. Social construction continued (with response from Schneider
and Ingram). American Political Science Review. 89:2, 437-446.
Schön, Donald A. and Martin Rein. 1994. Frame reflection: toward the resolution of
intractable policy controversies. New York: BasicBooks.
Schram, Sanford. 1995. Words of welfare: the poverty of social science and the social
science of poverty. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.
Schneiberg, Marc and Tim Bartley. 2008. Organizations, regulation and economic
behavior: regulatory dynamics and forms from the 19th to the 21st century. Annual Review of
Law and Social Science. 4:31-61.
Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting soldiers and mothers: the political origins of social
policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Stone, Deborah A. 2002. Policy paradox: the art of political decision making. New York:
Norton.
Thaler, Richard H. and Cass R. Sunstein. 2008. Nudge: improving decisions about health,
wealth, and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Viscusi, W. Kip, Joseph Emmett Harrington and John M. Vernon. 2005. Economics of
regulation and antitrust (4th edition). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, particularly chapters 1 and 2.
Weaver, R. Kent and Bert A. Rockman. 1993. Do institutions matter? government
capabilities in the United States and abroad. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.
Wilson, James Q. 1989. Bureaucracy: what government agencies do and why they do it.
New York: Basic Books.