| As
the oil shortages, inflation, and unemployment of the 1970s disrupted
American lives and the Watergate scandal rocked the presidency, faith
in the future of the nation and its leaders was severely damaged.
This volume, which is the product of a unique collaboration of distinguished
scholars from history and political science, offers a probing analysis
of the causes, processes, and consequences of this erosion of faith
in public solutions to our country's problems.
At the beginning of the decade, a confident American public and
its leaders still embraced the government activism that was the
legacy of the New Deal. But grave doubts about the efficacy of public
policy—fueled by Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation, energy crises,
and intensely controversial social policies—undermined this public
trust as the decade wore on, until by the end tax revolts were breaking
out across the country. Describing government as the problem, not
the solution, Ronald Reagan broke with tradition to set a political
and policy agenda that has become dominant ever since.
These experts from two disciplines bring their special insights
to bear in dissecting the key developments of this decade that have
transformed American politics in the last quarter of the century.
The contributors are Ballard C. Campbell, Joseph Hinchliffe, J.
David Hoeveler, Sidney M. Milkis, Alice O’Connor, Paul J. Quirk.
David Brian Robertson, and John T. Woolley.
Like the other titles in "Issues in Policy History," this book
reprints a special issue of The Journal of Policy History. |
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