IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jnlpup/v9y1989i02p179-205_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy: Lessons from the U.S. Foreign Policy Arena

Author

Listed:
  • Durant, Robert F.
  • Diehl, Paul F.

Abstract

This essay extends John Kingdon's work on predecision policy processes in US domestic policy to the foreign policy domain. While Kingdon's insights have significantly improved our understanding of predecision processes, further development is necessary for extension across both domestic and foreign policy domains. Kingdon's incremental evolutionary metaphor for alternative specification has to be revamped to include both gradualist and nonincremental policy types. Scholars must also make more explicit, elaborate, and thorough use of Cohen, March and Olsen's ‘garbage can’ model of decision making. To these ends, we offer a typology of policy alternatives that incorporates alternative metaphors premised on recent developments in evolutionary theory. The essay concludes by suggesting a research agenda amenable to pursuit in both national and cross-national contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Durant, Robert F. & Diehl, Paul F., 1989. "Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy: Lessons from the U.S. Foreign Policy Arena," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 179-205, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:9:y:1989:i:02:p:179-205_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0143814X00008114/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hoyoon Lee & Dawoon Jeong & Jeong-Dong Lee, 2023. "Drivers of institutional evolution: phylogenetic inertia and ecological pressure," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 279-308, April.
    2. Travis Sharp, 2019. "Wars, presidents, and punctuated equilibriums in US defense spending," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 52(3), pages 367-396, September.
    3. Kelly Levin & Benjamin Cashore & Steven Bernstein & Graeme Auld, 2012. "Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 45(2), pages 123-152, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:9:y:1989:i:02:p:179-205_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pup .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.