New Books in Political Science Sarah James, "The Politics of Failed Policies" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Mar 27, 2026
Sarah James, an assistant professor and former K–12 teacher and principal, explores how politics and data determine when failed policies get noticed. She discusses truancy laws, contrasting data systems in Texas and Washington. Short scenes show how credible evidence can amplify marginalized voices and how political choices shape what counts as proof.
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Principal Turned Researcher Explains Her Origin Story
- Sarah James left a career as a high school principal to study why education reforms often fail.
- Her firsthand experience with classroom and principalship problems drove the research question about recognizing failed policies.
Policy Diffusion Masks Frequent Failures
- Federalism's policy experiments don't guarantee learning; many state adoptions that seemed promising later proved disastrous.
- James noticed numerous education policies adopted as experiments that failed in practice despite diffusion literature optimism.
Truancy Criminalization Looked Nonsensical From Schools
- James investigated states that criminalized truancy and found the policy intuitively illogical from her school experience.
- She was surprised when Texas, a leader in punitive truancy policy, later repealed its law while other states remained punitive.
