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Modern organizations, whether public or private, are animated by a universal imperative: to achieve prominent goals that fulfill their mandates and uphold deeply held values and ideals. To realize this imperative, leaders entrusted to pursue organizational missions need to exercise a core set of strategic skills, discern opportunities, identify worthy goals, and implement pursuing actions. Strategic Policy Design introduces an integrated architecture for strategic thinking that enhances leadership skills in gauging conditions and crystallizing plans. This framework promotes a structured approach to strategic tasks by offering templates for decision making, from articulating a strategic mission, understanding the environment in which an organization operates, and rallying people and resources toward attaining strategic goals to a portable, versatile framework for the development and writing of strategy-oriented communications.For practitioners of policy, this book offers clarity of strategic thinking and introduces a new framework with which to perceive policy environments, identify and define goals, and organize strategies. For students, this book explores the skill and art in exercising leadership, encompassing both pragmatism and idealism. By learning and applying the showcased techniques, students will be equipped with a heightened awareness of policy domains, goal construction, and operational planning. Students in public-sector studies will find this book of interest, as will those studying political science, public administration, law, foreign affairs, international development, history, military sciences, and similar majors. The organizational perspective in strategy will also appeal to students in both business and non-profit sectors.

'The raffish epigraphs of a comic, George Carlin, and a poet, W.B. Yeats, set the tone for this exciting, revelatory and altogether important work. The question: Why are there so many no-shows on Election Day? Thirty thoughtful Americans-as good a cross section as you can get-tell us in a varied and astonishing manner.'-Studs Terkel, author'So much has been said (with so little knowledge) about America′s nonvoting majority. This intriguing book at last introduces us to the people who do not vote, dispels many of the myths about them, and shows us the depth of their disconnection from the political process. Through their revealing interviews and compelling conclusions, Jack C. Doppelt and Ellen Shearer illuminate the varied reasons that so many Americans find so little meaning in politics. Nonvoters shows us the futility of current efforts to woo nonvoters; it also enables us for the first time to understand how complex and deep-seated this important issue is.'-Geneva Overholser, Washington Post syndicated columnist'Fascinating and important. This book gives us new and significant insights.'-Paul Simon, Former United States Senator'Jack C. Doppelt and Ellen Shearer have brought the energy and open minds that mark the best reporters to look at the other half, at the 51% majority of the electorate who chose to stay away from the polls in 1996. They found'a Pandora′s box of dueling realities'that call into question the easy assumptions about nonvoters—that they′re low-income, poorly educated, and generally uninformed. The reality turns out to be considerably more complicated. The authors and their dispersed across the country to talk to the nonvoters themselves. Their voices ring through this thoughtful book.'-Susan Page, White House Bureau Chief, USA TODAY, and President, White House Correspondents′ Association In Nonvoters: America′s No-Shows, Doppelt and Shearer reveal the findings of their national survey and interviews with nonvoting Americans. Though they discovered a diverse array of opinions and reasons for not voting, they also found that nonvoters clustered into five types:'doers,''unpluggeds,''irritables,''don′t knows,'and'alienateds.'This book contains the stories of the people who don′t vote as well as the authors′ analyses of this troubling phenomenon in American politics. The authors consider voting behavior in local, off-year, and presidential elections, debunking the myths of why the majority of Americans decide to be'no shows'on election day. This groundbreaking study and insightful perspectives of 30 representative nonvoters will prove fascinating to anyone interested in politics and human behavior, whether as part of a campaign′s dialogue, a classroom study, or a living room discussion.

Spearheaded by Harvey Washington Wiley, the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 launched the federal regulation of food and drugs in the United States. Wiley is often lauded as a champion of public interest for bringing about a law that required healthful ingredients and honest labeling. Clayton Coppin and Jack High demonstrate, however, that Wiley was in fact surreptitiously allied with business firms that would benefit from regulation and moreover, that the law would help him build his government agency, the Federal Bureau of Chemistry. Coppin and High discuss such issues as Wiley's efforts to assign the law's enforcement to his own bureau. They go on to expose the selectivity of Wiley's enforcement of the law, in which he manipulated commercial competition in order to reward firms that supported him and penalize those that opposed him. By examining the history of the law's movement, the authors show that, rather than acting in the public interest, Wiley used the Pure Food and Drugs Act to further his own power and success. Finally, they analyze government regulation itself as the outcome of two distinct competitive processes, one that takes place in the market, the other in the polity. The book will interest scholars concerned with government regulation, including those in economics, political science, history, and business. Clayton Coppin is a management consultant and historian, Koch Industries, Wichita. Jack High is Professor of Economics, George Mason University.