Government and the Politics of Problem Solving

At a table in a classroom, Lawrence Rothenberg speaks as Nicholas Bagley and Don Moynihan listen.

Can American government help solve the big problems facing society?

Problems such as the lack of affordable housing, persistently low levels of reading achievement among U.S. students, and climate change?

Why is the political demand for problem-solving among the public, organized groups and other actors often lower than socially optimal?

How has the problem-solving capacity of key governing institutions — such as Congress and the bureaucracy — changed over time?

Despite their importance, these questions have received only limited attention from political scientists in recent years. To take stock of what we know (and have yet to learn) about the politics of problem solving, Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies invited leading scholars to prepare issue briefs on the topic. The issue briefs were originally presented at a conference sponsored by ISPS’s Democratic Innovations program and organized by ISPS Director Alan Gerber and Eric Patashnik, Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Brown University.

Read a summary of the conference

The issue briefs, published in a special issue of The Forum, address common themes and questions, such as distinguishing problem solving from other styles of policymaking, the measurement of government performance, the relationship between media attention and problem solving, electoral and other incentives for problem solving, and the role of crises in mobilizing resources for problem solving activity.