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The Contributions of President Aaron Wildavsky
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
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1 Wildavsky, has written movingly of his parents in an essay, “The Richest Boy in Poltava,” Society 13 (Nov./Dec. 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar on which I have drawn. Other autobiographical materials include the prefatory matter to various of his books, cited below, and “Rationality in Writing: Linear and Curvilinear,” Journal of Public Policy I (February 1981): 125–140.
2 The Revolt Against the Masses and Other Essays on Politics and Public Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 22.
3 The Revolt Against the Masses, p. 23.
4 His own four children are not so underprivileged: Wildavsky himself switched his registration to the Republican party a few years ago. This move was prompted by a complicated interaction of influences on his thinking: a belief that the Republicans were more hospitable to his individualistic, near-libertarian convictions about human freedom and the efficacy of self-help, a feeling that they were, as he is, strong for national defense and less embarrassed about openly patriotic sentiment. His sort of Democrats, meanwhile, had been losing a lot of intra-party battles. The dominant branch of the party, so it seemed, had become heedless of the costs of social programs and inattentive to many of their real consequences. Moreover, while left-Democrats made very heavy demands on the political system, they appeared to have no compunctions about withdrawing support from it by making unreasonable and thoughtless criticisms. Wildavsky did not leave the Democratic party, however, while his parents, both admirers of Roosevelt, were alive.
5 The Revolt Against the Masses, p. 23.
6 “Exploring the Content of McCarthyism,” The Australian Outlook 9 (June 1955): 88–104.
7 “Housing and Slum Clearance under the American Federal System,” Public Administration, The Journal of the Australian Regional Group of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, 14 (Dec. 1955): 229–236.
8 Studies in Australian Politics: The 1926 Referendum (Melbourne/London: F.W. Cheshire, 1958). Half of this book is Wildavsky's study; the other half is an essay by Dagmar Carboch. Wildavsky's vitae lists eight edited volumes and 17 (actually there are 18) books which he has written, alone or with collaborators.
9 “Nuclear Clubs or Nuclear Wars,” Yale Reviews (March 1962): 345–362. “Practical Consequences of the Theoretical Study of Defense Policy,” Public Administration Review 25 (March 1965): 90–103. “A Third-World Averaging Strategy,” with Singer, Max, U.S. Foreign Policy: Perspectives and Proposals for the 1970s, Seabury, Paul and Wildavsky, Aaron, eds. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 15–35.Google Scholar “ABM as an Issue or You Can't Tell the Strangeloves Without a Scorecard,” Commentary 48 (Nov. 1969): 55–63. “Oil and the Decline of Western Power,” with Friedland, Edward and Seabury, Paul, Political Science Quarterly 90 (Fall 1975): 437–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar “What's In It For Us? America's National Interest in Israel,” Middle East Review 10 (Fall 1977). “Dilemmas of American Foreign Policy,” “The Soviet System,” and “Containment Plus Pluralization” in Beyond Containment, Wildavsky, , ed. (Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1983), pp. 11–24, 25–38, 125–146.Google Scholar
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13 The Revolt Against the Masses, p. 3.
14 Some of us have taken considerable responsibility for Wildavsky's education through the years, and are delighted to take credit—at least partial credit—for his efforts now that they have received so much recognition. Among others, Wildavsky's siblings and seminar-mates at Yale included Robert C. Fried, Fred I. Greenstein, Raymond E. Wolfinger, Robert T. Golembiewski, Sarah McCalley Morehouse, James David Barber, Theodore Lowi, and Herbert Jacob.
15 Dixon-Yates: A Study in Power Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). See also “TVA and Power Politics,” American Political Science Review 65 (Sept. 1961): 576–590 and “The Analysis of Issue-Contexts in the Study of Decision Making,” Journal of Politics 24 (1962): 717–732.
16 Presidential Elections, with Polsby, Nelson W. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 6th edition, 1984).Google Scholar Wildavsky has collaborated four times in edited volumes, with Michael Boskin, Judith V. May, Paul Seabury, and me. Nine times he has collaborated with co-authors on books: with Mary Douglas, Ellen Tennenbaum, Hugh Heclo, Naomi Caiden, Paul Seabury and Edward Friedland, Frank Levy and Arnold Meltsner, Jeffrey Pressman, Jeanne Nienaber, and me.
17 See the chapter titled “Reform,” pp. 208–266 in the 6th edition.
18 Leadership in a Small Town (Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1964).
19 Smithies, Arthur, The Budgetary Process in the United States (New York: 1955).Google Scholar
20 The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 4th edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984) (first edition, 1964).
21 The Budgeting and Evaluation of Federal Recreation Programs, or Money Doesn't Grow on Trees, with Nienaber, Jeanne (New York: Basic Books, 1973).Google Scholar Planning and Budgeting in Poor Countries, with Caiden, Naomi (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974).Google Scholar Paperback edition by Transaction, Inc., New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980. Budgeting: A Comparative Theory of Budgetary Processes (Boston: Little Brown, 1975). The Private Government of Public Money, with Heclo, Hugh, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar How to Limit Government Spending (Los Angeles/Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). In addition, there is the edited volume, The Federal Budget: Economics and Politics (Editor, with Boskin, Michael) (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1982).Google Scholar Still in preparation is a history of taxation and expenditure in the western world, with Carolyn Webber, and an examination of contemporary budgetary battles since 1979 in American national government, with Joseph White. Other important Wildavsky contributions on budgeting include: “Political Implications of Budgetary Reform,” Public Administration Review 21 (Autumn 1961): 183–190. “Comprehensive Versus Incremental Budgeting in the Department of Agriculture,” with Hammond, Arthur, Administrative Science Quarterly 10 (Dec. 1965): 321–346.Google Scholar “Toward, a Radical Incrementalism: A Proposal to Aid Congress in Reform of the Budgetary Process,” in Congress: The First Branch of Government (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1966), pp. 115–165; “A Theory of the Budgetary Process,” with Davis, Otto and Dempster, M. A. H., American Political Science Review 60 (Sept. 1966): 529–547 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “On the Process of Budgeting: An Empirical Study of Congressional Appropriation,” with Davis, Otto A. and Dempster, M. A. H., in Papers on Non-Market Decision Making, Tullock, Gordon, ed. (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Center for Political Economy, University of Virginia, 1966), pp. 63–132 Google Scholar; “The Political Economy of Efficiency: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Program Budgeting,” Public Administration Review 26 (Dec. 1966): 292–310; “Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS,” Public Administration Review 29 (March/April 1969): 189–202. “Leave City Budgeting Alonel A Survey, Case History and Recommendations for Reform,” with Meltsner, Arnold, Financing the Metropolis: The Role of Public Policy in Urban Economies, 4, Crecine, John P. and Masotti, Louis H., eds. (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1970), pp. 311–358 Google Scholar; “On the Process of Budgeting II: An Empirical Study of Congressional Appropriations,” with Davis, Otto A. and Dempster, M. A. H., Studies in Budgeting, Byrne, et al. , eds. (Amsterdam-London: North-Holland Publishing, 1971), pp. 292–375 Google Scholar; “The Annual Expenditure Increment—or How Congress Can Regain Control of the Budget,” The Public Interest 33 (Fall 1973): 84–108; “Towards a Predictive Theory of Government Expenditure: U.S. Domestic Appropriations,” with Davis, Otto and Dempster, M. A. H., British Journal of Political Science 4 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “On Change … or, There is No Magic Size for an Increment,” with Dempster, M. A. H., Political Studies 27 (September 1979): 371–389 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Budget for All Seasons? Why the Traditional Budget Lasts,” Public Administration Review 6 (Nov./Dec. 1978): 501–509; “Budgetary Futures: Why Politicians May Want Spending Limits in Turbulent Times,” Public Budgeting and Finance 1 (Spring 1981): 20–27; “Budgets as Compromises Among Social Orders,” in The Federal Budget, pp. 21–38; “The Budget as New Social Contract,” Journal of Contemporary Studies 5 (Spring 1982): 3–20; “Modelling the U.S. Federal Spending Process: Overview and Implications,” with Dempster, Michael, in Matthews, R. C. O. and Stafford, G. B., eds., The Grants Economy and Collective Consumption (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 267–309 Google Scholar; “From Chaos Comes Opportunity: The Movement Toward Spending Limits in American and Canadian Budgeting,” Canadian Public Administration 26 (Summer 1983): 163–181; “The Transformation of Budgetary Norms,” Australian Journal of Public Administration 42 (December 1983): 421–432; “Budgets as Social Orders,” Research in Urban Policy 1 (1985): 139–197.
22 Some of these are collected in The Revolt Against the Masses and in Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979). British edition as The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1980). See also Implementation, with Pressman, Jeffrey, 3rd edition (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Urban Outcomes, with Levy, Frank and Meltsner, Arnold (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973).Google Scholar The Politics of Mistrust: Estimating American Oil and Gas Resources, with Tennenbaum, Ellen (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1981).Google Scholar
23 See “Party Discipline Under Federalism: Implications of Australian Experience,” Social Research (Winter 1961): 437–458; “A Bias Toward Federalism: Confronting the Conventional Wisdom on the Delivery of Governmental Services,” Special issue of Publius 6 (July 1976); “Bare Bones: Putting Flesh on the Skeleton of American Federalism,” The Future of Federalism in the 1980s (Washington, D.C.: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, July 1981). Report and Papers from the Conference on the Future of Federalism, Alexandria, Virginia, July 25–26, 1980, pp. 67–88; “Birthday Cake Federalism,” in American Federalism: New Challenges for the 1980s, Hawkins, Robert B. Jr., ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press, 1982), pp. 181–191 Google Scholar; “Federalism Means Inequality,” Society 22 (Jan./Feb. 1985): 42–49 and an edited work, American Federalism in Perspective (Editor) (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967).
24 Compare the first (1973) and third (1984) editions of Implementation.
25 See “The Three Cultures: Explaining Anomalies in the American Welfare State,” The Public Interest 69 (Fall 1982): 45–58; “A Proposal to Create a Cultural Theory of Risk,” with Thompson, Michael in The Risk Analysis Controversy: An Institutional Perspective, Kunreuther, H. C. and Ley, Engle V., ed. (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1983)Google Scholar; “Change in Political Culture,” Politics, Journal of the Australian Political Science Association (forthcoming November 1985); Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers, with Douglas, Mary (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar; The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1985).
26 The highly favorable reviews of The Nursing Father suggest that it was worth the effort.
27 The Revolt Against the Masses, p. 3.