Reviews of Deborah Stone's Policy Paradox

One of the best ways to truly understand a complex book is to read the book reviews to see what struck reviewers as the most important theme of the book. With that in mind, I was able to find reviews of Deborah Stone's Policy Paradox,  through JSTOR--one of the finest databases for peer-reviewed research across many disciplines. These links will take you directly to the reviews if you are viewing this on a campus that subscribes to JSTOR, or if you can authenticate your student status.


B. Guy Peters's review, in the American Political Science Review (1989): http://www.jstor.org/stable/1956482


Janice Thomas's review in Public Administration Review (1989): http://www.jstor.org/stable/976580

For Gates’s Aides, No More Fatigues at Work - NYTimes.com

This article in the New York Times shows how symbolic acts--like deciding what sort of uniforms military officers should wear at the Pentagon--can seem "merely" symbolic, but have real substantive policy effects.

8 Qualities of Powerful Writing - Stepcase Lifehack

Students in my courses know that I am pretty strict about writing. With that in mind, I will post links to interesting articles about writing, the writing process, and the like. Here's an interesting article that I find a bit abstract, but it does contain some really important ideas--including the idea that writing should be driven by one's passion for the subject and by a goal.

8 Qualities of Powerful Writing - Stepcase Lifehack

Martin Luther King Birthday and the Civil Rights Movement

In my Public Policy textbook I cite the civil rights movement as perhaps the most important social movement of the 20th century. With that in mind, this interesting article from the Raleigh News and Observer provides some context in North Carolina. These sort of stories are, of course, very common around the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, but the accumulation of these stories is a worthwhile way for younger people to learn about this movement, and for older people to remember their roles, however big or small, in that movement.

Indeed, the struggle to make MLK's birthday a national holiday would, itself, be an interesting case study. I will see if I can find a good treatment of this debate.