History As Policy

This book takes a fresh look at the connection between history and policy, proposing that historians rediscover a sense of ‘public purpose’ that can embrace political decision-making – and also enhance historical practice. Making policy is a complex and messy affair, calling on many different forms of expertise and historians have often been reluctant to get involved in policy advice, with those interested in ‘history in public’ tending to work with museums, heritage sites, broadcasters and community organisations. Green notes, however, that historians have also insisted that ‘history matters’ in public policy debate, and been critical of politicians’ distortions or neglect of the past. She argues that it is not possible to have it both ways.

Douglas E. Ashford joins a growing number of scholars who have questioned the behavioralist assumptions of much policy science. The essays in this volume show why policy analysis cannot be confined to prevailing methods of social science. Policy-making behavior involves historical, contextual, and philosophical factors that also raise critical questions about the concepts and theory of the discipline. Ashford asks difficult questions about the contextual, conjunctural, and unintentional circumstances that affect actual decision-making. His bridging essays summarize opposing viewpoints and conflicting interpretations to help form a new agenda for comparative policy analysis.

Does history matter? Is it anything more than entertainment? And if so, what practical relevance does it have? In this fully revised second edition of a seminal text, John Tosh persuasively argues that history is central to an informed and critical understanding of topical issues in the present. Including a range of contemporary examples from Brexit to child sexual abuse to the impact of the internet, this is an important and practical introduction for all students of history. Inspiring and empowering, this book provides both students and general readers with a stimulating and practical rationale for the study of history. It is essential reading for all undergraduate students of history who require an engaging introduction to the subject. New to this Edition: - Illustrative examples and case studies are fully updated - Features a postscript on British historians and Brexit - Bibliography is heavily revised

In our rapidly advancing scientific and technological world, many take great pride and comfort in believing that we are on the threshold of new ways of thinking, living, and understanding ourselves. But despite dramatic discoveries that appear in every way to herald the future, legacies still carry great weight. Even in swiftly developing fields such as health and medicine, most systems and policies embody a sequence of earlier ideas and preexisting patterns. In History and Health Policy in the United States, seventeen leading scholars of history, the history of medicine, bioethics, law, health policy, sociology, and organizational theory make the case for the usefulness of history in evaluating and formulating health policy today. In looking at issues as varied as the consumer economy, risk, and the plight of the uninsured, the contributors uncover the often unstated assumptions that shape the way we think about technology, the role of government, and contemporary medicine. They show how historical perspectives can help policymakers avoid the pitfalls of partisan, outdated, or merely fashionable approaches, as well as how knowledge of previous systems can offer alternatives when policy directions seem unclear. Together, the essays argue that it is only by knowing where we have been that we can begin to understand health services today or speculate on policies for tomorrow.

Leading scholars and policymakers explore how history influences foreign policy and offer insights on how the study of the past can more usefully serve the present. History, with its insights, analogies, and narratives, is central to the ways that the United States interacts with the world. Historians and policymakers, however, rarely engage one another as effectively or fruitfully as they might. This book bridges that divide, bringing together leading scholars and policymakers to address the essential questions surrounding the history-policy relationship including Mark Lawrence on the numerous, and often contradictory, historical lessons that American observers have drawn from the Vietnam War; H. W. Brands on the role of analogies in U.S. policy during the Persian Gulf crisis and war of 1990–91; and Jeremi Suri on Henry Kissinger's powerful use of history.

A Brief History of Public Policy Since the New Deal traces the development of national domestic policy from the Great Depression through the early Trump years. A chronological look that illuminates the cumulative effects of policy change, the book also focuses on themes such as the interplay of ideas, events, politics, and people; models such as incrementalism, multiple streams, and punctuated equilibrium; the importance of foreign policy issues to the development of domestic policy; and features including the importance of problem definition and the “law of unanticipated consequences.” Following the narrative, each chapter includes a summary of seven key policy areas: economic policy, social welfare, civil rights, environmental and education policy, moral/cultural issues, and federalism. The material is organized by eras identified by presidencies and by whether the era represented a burst of policymaking, made possible because key inputs of ideas, events, politics, and people aligned for change, or a rough equilibrium. Although presidencies are used to define eras, the role of all the institutions are given their due.

The book provides detailed analysis of the structure and operation of the British Civil Service along with a historically grounded account of its development in the period from Margaret Thatcher to the Tony Blair premiership. It assesses continuity and change in the civil service during a period of deep transformation using new archive files, government and parliament reports, primary and secondary legislation. The author takes the evolutionary change of the civil service as a central theme and examines the friction between new managerial practices introduced by government in the 80s and 90s and the administrative traditions rooted in the history of this institution. In particular the author assesses the impact of the New Public Management agenda of the Thatcher and Major years its enhanced continuity during the Blair years. Further changes that involved ministerial responsibility, codification, performance management, special advisers and constitutional conventions are analyzed in the conclusions.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. If history matters for understanding key development outcomes then surely historians should be active contributors to the debates informing these understandings. This volume integrates, for the first time, contributions from ten leading historians and seven policy advisors around the central development issues of social protection, public health, public education and natural resource management. How did certain ideas, and not others, gain traction in shaping particular policy responses? How did the content and effectiveness of these responses vary across different countries, and indeed within them? Achieving this is not merely a matter of seeking to 'know more' about specific times, places and issues, but recognising the distinctive ways in which historians rigorously assemble, analyse and interpret diverse forms of evidence. This book will appeal to students and scholars in development studies, history, international relations, politics and geography as well as policy makers and those working for or studying NGOs.