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In January 1970 Alice M. Rivlin spoke to an audience at the University of California-Berkeley. The topic was developing a more rational approach to decisionmaking in government. If digital video, YouTube, and TED Talks had been inventions of the 1960s, Rivlin's talk would have been a viral hit. As it was, the resulting book, Systematic Thinking for Social Action, spent years on the Brookings Press bestseller list. Is is a very personal and conversational volume about the dawn of new ways of thinking about government.As deputy assistant secretary for program coordination, and later as assistan

The American dream is fading: for nearly two decades, the economy has been performing below par, the quality of life has deteriorated, and the government has not confronted the public problems that concern citizens most. In this provocative book, Alice Rivlin offers a straightforward, nontechnical look at the issues threatening the American dream and proposes a solution: restructure responsibilities between the federal and state government. Under her plan, the federal government would eliminate most of its programs in education, housing, highways, social services, economic development, and job training, enabling it to move the federal budget from deficit toward surplus. States would pick up these responsibilities, carrying out a "productivity agenda" to revitalize the American economy. Common shared taxes would give the state adequate revenues to carry out their tasks and would reduce intrastate competition and disparities. The federal government would be freer to deal with increasingly complex international issues and would retain responsibility for programs requiring national uniformity. A primary federal job would be the reform of health care financing to ensure control of costs and to mandate basic insurance coverage for everyone. Published in the summer of 1992, Reviving the American Dream was read by presidential candidate Bill Clinton; by year's end, President Clinton appointed its author, Alice Rivlin, as deputy budget director. Today, the ideal in Rivlin's book--and Rivlin herself--are having an impact inside the administration. Selected as one of Choice magazine's Outstanding Books of 1993.

In a representative democracy, national security decisions are necessarily political. The subject of this paper is the role of systematic analysis in raising the level of that political debate, especially in the Congress.

The political rhetoric of the 2012 election suggested that Americans are deeply split over how to deliver and pay for health care. In fact, however, the election may have cleared the way for substantial reforms in health care delivery that will gradually enable the United States to finance effective health care for almost everyone at a sustainable cost. The election affirmed for the first time that almost everyone in the United States will have health insurance coverage and put to rest the idea that voters will tolerate radical change in the complex patchwork of health care financing that has evolved in the United States. The tasks remaining are improving the quality of health care delivered by increasing care coordination and reducing the growth of costs by moving away from fee‐for‐service delivery toward rewarding quality and value. These challenges are daunting but less ideologically fraught than health coverage expansion.