Prevailing conceptions of the welfare state in the United States have failed to acknowledge the widespread partnership that exists between government and private voluntary organizations in the provision of human services. Thanks in large part to this partnership, voluntary organizations have retained a significant role in the American welfare state, delivering a larger share of government-financed human services than government agencies. By cutting back on government spending, therefore, the Reagan administration has significantly reduced the revenues of the nonprofit sector while calling on this sector to do more. Although nonprofits as a group have overcome the resulting cutbacks, they have done so chiefly by increasing their income from service charges, rather than their private charitable support.

This paper first reviews the implementation literature of the past fifteen years, with particular emphasis on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. It also argues that the 4–6 year time-frame used in most implementation research misses many critical features of public policy-making. The paper then outlines a conceptual framework for examining policy change over a 10–20 year period which combines the best features of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches with insights from other literatures.

Two frameworks for understanding the debate on regulation are discussed. In the first, an economizing perspective, various institutional arrangements are seen as instruments and the question posed is which is the most efficient in achieving public objectives. The second, a political perspective, begins from economizers' lack of interest in the basic organizing principles of the political structure within which the choice of regulatory arrangements occurs. Conceptions of such principles in the American case are considered and the implications of each for the choice of regulatory institutions are addressed. A parallel discussion is undertaken for the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by noting, among other things, that from a political perspective, an extensive regulatory sector looks more attractive than it does from an economizing perspective.

The article examines the manner in which public-policy for satellite broadcasting has been made in West Germany and France, the two countries currently leading developments in satellite broadcasting technology in Western Europe. A special theme of the two case studies is that of the complex relations and potential contradictions between industrial/technological policy and broadcasting policy, between the wider economics of satellite broadcasting and its cultural dimension. The article demonstrates a common pattern, as policy makers in both countries have been constrained to develop a broker role between competing aims and between national/regional pressures and international pressures. Nevertheless, both ideological and structural differences remained of enduring importance in establishing the parameters of policy making, and produced different, as well as similar, policy outcomes in the two countries. The question of ‘sovereignty’ is also set within the wider European context and the article examines responses at this latter level, in particular the European Community.