Description: How can democracy be improved in an age when people are profoundly disenchanted with government? Part of the answer lies in the design of public policy that unmistakably works to advance citizenship by listening to, educating, and involving ordinary people. Schneider and Ingram evaluate the current approaches to policy theory and recommend a series of reforms that will improve policy designs and help restore citizen confidence in government. Policy Design for Democracy is one of the first books to examine systematically the broader implications of the substantive aspects of public policy.
Review Quotes:
"This is a policy textbook with point of view and attitude. It will influence the next generation of students (graduates and undergraduates alike) and it will have to be taken with utmost seriousness by scholars, practitioners, and politicians."--Theodore Lowi, author of American Government and The End of Liberalism
"Schneider and Ingram have resynthesized the policy literature around one central question: how do various elements of policy design and policy making help or hinder democracy? And in their new bottles, the old wine really does taste better."--Deborah A. Stone, author of The Disabled State and Policy Paradox and Political Reason
"This superb review, critique, and synthesis of policy theory will enable everyone concerned with public policy, whether as practitioner, teacher, or student, not only to understand the process better and be more effective, but to think clearly about the values on which policy should be built."--John Mollenkopf, author of A Phoenix in the Ashes
"It is time for intelligent optimism in political science, and Schneider and Ingram serve us well. Their formulation of 'policy design' wonderfully reminds us that policy has content and not mere form. They offer a framework that seeks to overcome degenerative policymaking, of which there is surely enough, and to achieve constructive results through democratic means. It is Lasswellian in spirit, but also reminds one of Norton Long."--Matthew Holden, Jr., author of Continuity and Disruption