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Governance and Democracy: Public Policy in Modern America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Morton Keller
Morton Keller
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

Each stage of our national development has had a distinctive form of public policy. And each has faced a core tension between the dictates of governance and the constraints of democracy. Economic or social interests, and advantage-seeking politicians, forge policies. Countervailing interests, or changing times, or the limits of state capacity see to it that those policies rarely if ever live up to the expectations of their progenitors. But then no one ever said that the American polity, to say nothing of its democratic ideal, is a neat or orderly thing.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2008

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References

Notes

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