Author Description

The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration, and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change. Jeffery A. Jenkins is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Faculty Associate in the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. He has published more than thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Studies in American Political Development. He is also the author (with Charles Stewart III) of Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government (2013) and the editor (with Eric M. Patashnik) of Living Legislation: Durability, Change, and the Politics of American Lawmaking (2012)