"The Great Broadening" Authors Meet Their Critics

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

"The Great Broadening" documents the expansion of the national policy agenda and its effects on modern governance. Beginning in the mid-1950s, peaking in the late 1970s, and declining afterward, the United States experienced a vast expansion in the national policy-making agenda. We call this burst the Great Broadening because government got larger, not by doing more of what it was already doing but by getting involved in new issues. We suggest that the downstream effects of the expansion of the scope of the federal government in the late 1970s include, increases in polarization, the radical transformation of Congress from primarily a lawmaking body to primarily an oversight body, the proliferation of interest groups in Washington D.C. and the conservative counter-revolution.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 25: Public Policy

Chair

• Sean M. Theriault University of Texas, Austin

Presenters

• Frances E. Lee Princeton University

• Beth L. Leech Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• David R. Mayhew Yale University

• Bryan D. Jones University of Texas, Austin

• Michelle Whyman Duke University

• Eric M. Patashnik Brown University