Analysis and Assessment of Baumgartner Jones Agendas and Instability in American Politics
I find a certain amount of difficulty when I attempt to offer an assessment of Baumgartner and Jones' work, Agendas and Instability in American Politics. The reason for this is because the book is written in such a manner that it is enormously difficult to offer a conflicting argument to the model they use to describe how issues become part of agenda, the power of interest groups, policy monopolies, how power shifts, and other issues related to the aforementioned. For this reason, I must say that I find their model to be on solid ground. The previous reading assignments in this course which where mostly based on the writings of C. Wright Mills and his protege Robert Dahl read like the thoughts of writers who were desperately trying to convince the reader that they are right. To the contrary, Baumgartner and Jones made no real attempts to "sell" their research and rather presented their findings and beliefs in a way that seems to say to the reader that "this is the way things are". Examples of legislative activity that seem to conform to their model offered to the readers of Baumgartner and Jones are presented in a way that basically shows the reader how their model translates into real life as opposed to an offering of ev
3. Groseclose, Tim and David King. "Little Theatre: Committees in Congress", Great Theatre: The American Congress in the 1990's. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. My criticism of Baumgartner and Jones is that, in my opinion, their model is just too simple, too cut and dried and void of any upset or turmoil. Although pluralism seeks to minimize conflict anyway, their work seems to envision the American public as a homogeneously thinking mass. They appear to put forth the idea that what ever the media says, the public will believe without question and that whichever interest happens to have a policy monopoly at the time the public will march in lockstep with their will. 2. King, David. Turf Wars: How Congressional Committees Claim Jurisdiction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997
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Approximate Word count = 1484
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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