Beginning: Concepts Underlying the Course

For next time (Wednesday, September 3) 

• Watch Depression documentary: "The Dawn of the Great Depression," directed by William Karel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Ew7jbot_k
• Read ch. 3 of Johnson

Path dependency

• Laws and institutions persist
• Policy creates politics by spawning and nurturing iron triangles and issue networks.

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• Today's issues stem from decisions stretching back as far as the 1930s.
  

Policy Windows and the Issue-Attention Cycle

MLK: "In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs."

The Limits of knowledge and foreknowlege

• Imperfect understanding of technology and demographics
• Unexpected events and black swans (e.g.,  WWII)
• Hubris and unanticipated consequences
• Sometimes things do get better. Harvard physiologist Lawrence Henderson: "Sometime between 1910 and 1912 in this country, a random patient, with a random disease, consulting a doctor chosen at random had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than fifty-fifty chance of profiting from the encounter”

Events:

• Wars, depressions, pandemics
• The special case of the Cold War

Institutions and Their Leaders

• Federalism:  most domestic policy involves state and local government, as well as the private sector.
• Courts and their limitations.
• Policymakers' own history  
• Ben Bernanke's expertise on the Great Depression.
• Bob Dole, Tom Harkin and the ADA

Issues overlap and interact 

• Policies on diverse issues may share a family resemblance 
• Solving one problem may create others.