POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURE

This paper suggests that there has been a small shift in American agricultural practices, and more importantly in policy making in this area, toward what can be called organic or alternative agriculture. These policy changes are partially due to triggering devices, exogenous forces that have led to changes in the policy agenda. Two major exogenous factors are reviewed–the energy “crisis” and environmental factors. Both sets of forces have resulted in farmers beginning to turn to alternative agricultural techniques, in government officials changing their attitudes about alternative agriculture, and new research activities in this direction being undertaken by various government bodies.     

THE ASSUMPTIONS OF POLICY ANALYSIS

The preconditions of policy making are a concern in a human mind about some situation, actual or hypothetical, which is perceived as important and the conceived possibility that human action could make it better. Perceptions of the situation and of its origins and of the scope if any for acting on it and the actions conceived as available vary immensely with the culture of the society involved; and they change with time. This theme is illustrated by a brief summary of British political and cultural responses to poverty and to unemployment in the last hundred years.     

THE SOURCES OF PUBLIC POLICY: WELFARE POLICY IN THE AMERICAN STATES

The conceptualization of political and economic determinants of public policy as interactive rather than sufficient causes is subjected here to a comparative state analysis. An examination of interactive effects of culture, wealth, and gubernatorial power on AFDC grants and Medicaid benefits offers empirical illustration of Stonecash's reconceptualization of the classic politics-process-policy model. The results indicate that political dispositions become more potent in combination with increasing concentrations of wealth and executive power.     

THE POLICY LEGACY OF RONALD REAGAN

Charles O. Jones, ed. 1988. The Reagan Legacy: Promise and Performance B.B. Kymlicka and Jean V. Matthews, eds. 1988. The Reagan Revolution? J.D. Lees and Michael Turner, eds. 1988. Reagan's First Four Years: A New Beginning?     

THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY

Books reviewed in this articles:
Henry J. Aaron, Economic Effects of Social Security
Peter J. Ferrara, Social Security; Adverting the Crisis
Carolyn L. Weaver, The Crisis in Social Security; Economic and Political Origins     

METAPHORS OF POLICY MOBILITY: FLUID SPACES OF “CREATIVITY” POLICY

This article considers the metaphors we use when studying what geographers have come to call policy mobility. Specifically, it argues that a metaphor developed by Mol and Law (1994) of fluid space offers something different to metaphors that are currently being used in the area, including diffusion, transfer and network. In particular, the metaphor of fluid space describes a distributed and highly differentiated space of policy mobility and circulation that remains connected and robust despite the lack of a strong centre. This is illustrated through a discussion of the global spread of policies that claim to act on or through some aspect of human creativity, such as the creative industries, the creative class, the creative city and so on. The article concludes that this metaphor helps us to explain why some policy types are able to move to so many places while avoiding the tendency to link this movement to a universal critique.