John A. Hird – författare

For the past dozen years the multibillion-dollar Federal hazardous waste clean-up programme, known as Superfund, has been mired in controversy. In addition to problems with Superfund financing, liability, and site clean-up priorities, the central predicament is that risk experts and the public disagree over the severity of Superfund site risks. The resulting policy stalemate, argues John Hird, is as unnecessary as it is counterproductive. Now, in the first book to discuss Superfund within the larger context of environmental risk management, Hird offers not only a rigorous evaluation and critique of the programme but also an informed solution to the current impasse. Hird begins by analyzing the political and economic factors that shape and are shaped by, Superfund. These include analyses of risk assessment and risk management, the relative risks posed by Superfund sites compared with other environmental problems, environmental equity and Superfund policy, the extent to which political institutions have steered Superfund's course, and a political analysis of why the Superfund programme has evolved the way it has.He recommends significant policy reforms that would improve Superfund efficiency and encourage public participation in managing environmental risks. And he shows how creative public institutions can be crafted to address environmental risk management disputes - even ones as contentious as Superfund. Hird concludes that policymakers must recognize the multiple perspectives in managing risks and build political institutions to translate those differing views into public policy. Failure to do so, he argues, will doom controversial programmes such as Superfund. This book aims not only to improve Superfund policy but also to stimulate creative thinking about how governments can better manage risks to public health and the environment.

Policy Analysis in the United States brings together contributions from some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of public policy analysis including Beryl Radin, David Weimer, Rebecca Maynard, Laurence Lynn, and Guy Peters. This volume represents an indispensable companion to other volumes in the International Library of Policy Analysis series, enabling scholars to compare cross-nationally concepts and practices of public policy analysis in the media, sub-national governments, and many more institutional settings.The volume represents an invaluable contribution to public policy analysis and can be used widely in teaching at both graduate and undergraduate levels in schools of public affairs and public policy as well as in comparative politics and policy.

Policy Analysis in the United States brings together contributions from some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of public policy analysis including Beryl Radin, David Weimer, Rebecca Maynard, Laurence Lynn, and Guy Peters. The volume represents an invaluable contribution to public policy analysis and can be used widely in teaching at both graduate and undergraduate levels in schools of public affairs and public policy as well as in comparative politics and policy.

If knowledge is power, then John Hird has opened the doors for anyone interested in public policymaking and policy analysis on the state level. A beginning question might be: does politics put gasoline or sugar in the tank? More specifically, in a highly partisan political environment, is nonpartisan expertise useful to policymaking? Do policy analysts play a meaningful role in decision making? Does policy expertise promote democratic decision making? Does it vest power in an unelected and unaccountable elite, or does it become co-opted by political actors and circumstances? Is it used to make substantive changes or just for window-dressing? In a unique comparative focus on state policy, Power, Knowledge, and Politics dissects the nature of the policy institutions that policymakers establish and analyzes the connection between policy research and how it is actually used in decision making. Hird probes the effects of politics and political institutions—parties, state political culture and dynamics, legislative and gubernatorial staffing, partisan think tanks, interest groups—on the nature and conduct of nonpartisan policy analysis. Through a comparative examination of institutions and testing theories of the use of policy analysis, Hird draws conclusions that are more useful than those derived from single cases. Hird examines nonpartisan policy research organizations established by and operating in U.S. state legislatures—one of the most intense of political environments—to determine whether and how nonpartisan policy research can survive in that harsh climate. By first detailing how nonpartisan policy analysis organizations came to be and what they do, and then determining what state legislators want from them, he presents a rigorous statistical analysis of those agencies in all 50 states and from a survey of 800 state legislators. This thoroughly comprehensive look at policymaking at the state level concludes that nonpartisan policy analysis institutions can play an important role—as long as they remain scrupulously nonpartisan.

If knowledge is power, then John Hird has opened the doors for anyone interested in public policymaking and policy analysis on the state level. A beginning question might be: does politics put gasoline or sugar in the tank? More specifically, in a highly partisan political environment, is nonpartisan expertise useful to policymaking? Do policy analysts play a meaningful role in decision making? Does policy expertise promote democratic decision making? Does it vest power in an unelected and unaccountable elite, or does it become co-opted by political actors and circumstances? Is it used to make substantive changes or just for window-dressing? In a unique comparative focus on state policy, Power, Knowledge, and Politics dissects the nature of the policy institutions that policymakers establish and analyzes the connection between policy research and how it is actually used in decision making. Hird probes the effects of politics and political institutions - parties, state political culture and dynamics, legislative and gubernatorial staffing, partisan think tanks, interest groups - on the nature and conduct of nonpartisan policy analysis.Through a comparative examination of institutions and testing theories of the use of policy analysis, Hird draws conclusions that are more useful than those derived from single cases. Hird examines nonpartisan policy research organizations established by and operating in U.S. state legislatures - one of the most intense of political environments - to determine whether and how nonpartisan policy research can survive in that harsh climate. By first detailing how nonpartisan policy analysis organizations came to be and what they do, and then determining what state legislators want from them, he presents a rigorous statistical analysis of those agencies in all 50 states and from a survey of 800 state legislators. This thoroughly comprehensive look at policymaking at the state level concludes that nonpartisan policy analysis institutions can play an important role - as long as they remain scrupulously nonpartisan.