The Politics of Political Process

The latter is broadly what Charles O. Jones proposes to do in the third (1984) edition of his book, An Introduction to Public Policy. In his introductory remarks "To the Students," he writes that

The function of this book has changed even though its approach has not. Originally, the book was to serve as a general introduction to public policy. Now I see it as quite specialized in its focus. It is really more about

the politics of the policy process [author's emphasis]

than about the ways of doing policy analysis."

Accordingly, the first of the book's ten chapters is titled with a quotation, "The causes of policy failure are, at root, political." (The source of this quote is not cited.) The chapter launches direc

. . .
he middleman increasingly cut out, as organizations mount their own thinly disguised political advertisements, leaving out only the words "vote for" or "vote against." The most important and least obvious role of extragovernmental policy groups is in putting issues on the public table. We are all familiar with the arguments and jockeying that take place once an issue is already on the table, but we hardly notice an issue till it is already there. An interesting example provided by Jones is that of child abuse. As he writes, "the physical abuse of children is the sort of problem that evokes general public attention and sympathy. Yet for centuries it was dealt with almost exclusively in the private sector." This began to change in the late 1950s, when advocacy groups began to raise discussion of the issue. It steadily moved from there to the (then) Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and thence to Congress. The media, along with formal identification of a problem, played a crucial role in this process. Particularly horrific instances of mistreated children must always have made the papers, but once given a name, "Battered child syndrome," they became instances of a social problem rather than ghastly but isola
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 1584
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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