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Introducing the fundamentals of health policy and offering analysis of major health care programmes and reflections on issues around access, quality, cost and the ethics of provision, this book provides a comprehensive exploration of the role and influence of public policy on the medical system in the United States.

"American Public Policy provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the policy-making process from procedural approaches and policy instruments to in-depth analysis of specific policy issues. Not shying away from the complexity of governmental procedure, B. Guy Peters ensures that the mechanisms of the policy process are understandable through discussion of topical policy areas. The twelfth edition covers how the background for policy in the United States has changed dramatically over the past several years in the midst of political polarization and gridlock, unemployment and recessions, and calls for greater diversity and inclusion. New topics include the eroding trust in government, COVID-19 pandemic and relief packages, the expanding national debt, the rising costs of health care and calls for "Medicare for All" or a public option, the rollback of environmental regulations under the Trump administration, and the rebuilding of alliances abroad"--

This text examines contemporary public administration and its historical roots, and how those traditions continue to influence administrative behaviour.

Institutional theory plays a significant role in contemporary political science. As in the previous editions, the new fourth edition provides an overview of the major institutional approaches in the discipline, as well as considering the possibility of a more integrated institutional theory. This edition also contains two new chapters. One assesses the role of informal institutions and their linkages with formal structures of governing. The second new chapter provides a detailed discussion of the processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization.

The field of policy studies has always been interested in analyzing and improving the sets of policy tools adopted by governments to correct policy problems, and better understanding and improving processes of policy analysis and policy formulation in order to do so. Past studies have helped clarify the role of historical processes, policy capacities and design intentions in affecting policy formulation processes, and more recently in understanding how the bundling of multiple policy elements together to meet policy goals can be better understood and done. While this work has progressed, however, the discussion of what goals policy designs should serve remains disjointed. Here it is argued that a central goal, in fact, 'the' central goal, of policy design is effectiveness. Effectiveness serves as the basic goal of any design, upon which is built other goals such as efficiency or equity

"Public policy can be considered a design science. It involves identifying relevant problems, selecting instruments to address the problem, developing institutions for managing the intervention, and creating means of assessing the design. Policy design has become an increasingly challenging task, given the emergence of numerous 'wicked' and complex problems. Much of policy design has adopted a technocratic and engineering approach, but there is an emerging literature that builds on a more collaborative and prospective approach to design. This book will discuss these issues in policy design and present alternative approaches to design."--Publisher's description

"Peters provides the most comprehensive discussion available of the problem of policy coordination in the public sector. He begins by observing that governments typically react to policy problems by embracing specialization, which tends to undermine efforts to deliver better coordinated policies. Drawing upon a variety of perspectives, both theoretical and multinational, he tackles this conundrum by focusing on the concept of horizontal management. His conceptual analysis is supplemented by four case studies of public sector coordination (Homeland Security in the U.S., child protection in the U.K., policymaking in Finland, and the European Union). Finding the appropriate balance between specialization and coordination, Peters concludes, is a knotty problem yet essential to the delivery of the most effective policies."--

Cover -- Contents -- List of Key Texts -- List of Tables -- Preface -- 1 The Importance of Comparison -- Forms of comparative analysis -- Types of comparative studies -- The content of comparisons -- Cross-time comparisons -- Conclusion -- 2 The Logic of Comparison -- Comparative research design -- Research design and case selection -- Levels of analysis -- Threats to validity in non-experimental research -- Conclusion -- 3 The Number of Cases and Which Ones? -- Strategies with different numbers of cases -- Small-N research in general -- Conclusion -- 4 Measurement and Bias -- The traveling problem -- Typologies -- Triangulation -- Nominal categories -- Ideal-type analysis and measurement -- Conclusion -- 5 The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics -- Levels of explanation -- Macro-level theories -- Meso-level theories -- Micro-level theories -- State and society -- Conclusion -- 6 The Case Study -- Improving case research -- Case studies -- Conducting case research -- Defining cases -- The purposes of case research -- The case as process -- Issues in case study research -- The role of the case researcher -- Conclusion -- 7 Building on Case Analysis -- Meta-analysis -- Boolean algebra and cumulation -- Conclusion -- 8 Events Data and Change Over Time -- Events data -- The method -- Relationships with other methods -- Potential problems -- Conclusion -- 9 Statistical Analysis -- Statistical modes of explanation in comparative politics -- The question of time -- The problem of context -- Coping with a small N -- Secondary analysis -- Conclusion -- 10 The Future of Comparative Politics -- Territory or function: choices in comparison -- Theory and the restriction of perspective -- Methods and the restriction of vision -- The exceptional and the ordinary: what can we learn from each? -- Modesty, but hope -- The future of comparative politics.

The comparative study of public policy once promised to make major contributions to our understanding of government. Much of that promise now appears unfulfilled. What accounts for this decline in intellectual fortunes and change in intellectual fashion? Comparing Public Bureaucracies seeks to understand why. One of the principal answers is that there is no readily accepted and dependent variable that would allow comparative public administration to conform to the usual canons of social research. In contrast, comparative public policy has a ready-made dependent variable in public expen