New Books in Public Policy

Jessica Rich’s new book, State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a fascinating and important examination of civil-state relations, social movements, and bureaucracies all centering around AIDS/HIV policy as the nexus of analysis. With AIDS/HIV as the center of the analysis, Rich explores how AIDS/HIV policy as a social movement developed in the latter part of the 20th century in Brazil, and subsequently finds groundbreaking outcomes in the way that this policy arena was sustained as an advocacy movement even after policy was developed and implemented. State-Sponsored Activism unpacks the theoretical parameters that have generally framed understandings of governmental functioning in Latin America more broadly, and Brazil in particular, teasing out anticipated analysis of AIDS/HIV policy and political actors but also finding different dynamics between national bureaucrats, civil society organizations, and social advocacy movements. In this clear and rigorous study, Rich braids together the unexpected relationship between new bureaucrats who were, often, working collaboratively or in concert with social movements to press for comprehensive AIDS/HIV policy, and then, once that policy was in place, these same relationships continued to operate to keep and strengthen the policy over the first decade of the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

We are fed a steady stream of doom and gloom—terrorist attacks, erosion of democracy, robots taking our jobs. But Michael A. Cohen and his co-author Mich Zenko argue in Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans (Yale University Press, 2019) that our world has never been “more peaceful, freer, healthier, better educated, and wealthier,” and we only feel otherwise because of “threat inflation” that sensationalizes relatively minor threats.  In our discussion, Cohen readily acknowledges serious problems remain, such as climate change and gun violence, but urges us to recognize how much progress has been made and apply the lessons that have been learned. Moreover, he asks us to beware the “threat-industrial complex” of military agencies, special interest groups and the media that distort our understanding of the world we live in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

It is an article of faith in many circles that the most effective and efficient way to solve a broad range of local and national problems is through public-private partnerships. What’s not to like? Especially in a climate in which people think resources are scarce, seeking out help from corporate actors seems an obvious win-win. But it’s not. Listen to Jonathan H. Marks discuss The Perils of Partnership: Industry Influence, Institutional Integrity, and Public Health (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the public harm and private profiteering that are too often the result of these relationships.Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Moral and political theorists have paid a healthy amount of attention to states’ rights to determine who may reside within their territory.  Accordingly, there’s a large literature on immigration, borders, asylum, and refugees.  However, relatively little work has been done on questions concerning how refugees are treated once they have gained access to a new country; and from these questions emerge additional issues concerning the repatriation of refugees.  As it turns out, there are several global organizations involved in efforts to make repatriation accessible to refugees.  However, it is frequently the case that repatriation is dangerous and risky; and often the refugees’ desire to repatriate is arguably non-voluntary.  Distinctive moral concerns quickly into view.In The Ethics and Practice of Refugee Repatriation (University of Edinburgh Press, 2018), Mollie Gerver systematically addresses these distinctive moral questions.  Combining philosophical analysis with testimonial data from extensive field work with refugees, she makes concrete policy recommendations for navigating this fraught moral landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In The Form of the Firm: A Normative Political Theory of the Corporation (Oxford University Press, 2018), Abraham Singer essentially marries together two disciplinary schools of thought and approaches to understand and consider the corporate firm. In his work, Singer takes seriously the idea, structure, function, and position of the firm, as distinct from markets, within modern societies. Singer notes that the thrust of the book is “to articulate a normative theory of the corporation that synthesizes economic and political insights” and positions these understandings within the political and economic realities of contemporary capitalism and liberalism. Singer analyzes and explores the historical and theoretical development of firms and corporations, integrating economic and political theory as the dual lenses through which to consider not only the firms themselves but also their position and function within political societies, since “corporations serve economic ends, but through political means.” The Form of the Firm considers how and in what ways firms can and should contribute to and sustain the values, particularly the political values, that define and inform the world in which they exist. This analysis has broad and interdisciplinary appeal, especially for political theorists, economists, political scientists, managerialists, legal and regulatory experts, ethicists, and those in corporate governance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular--and largely unexamined--idea that in order to get good health care, people must learn to shop for it. Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) explores the consequences of the consumer economy and American medicine having come of age at exactly the same time. Tracing the robust development of advertising, marketing, and public relations within the medical profession and the vast realm we now think of as "health care," Tomes considers what it means to be a "good" patient. As she shows, this history of the coevolution of medicine and consumer culture tells us much about our current predicament over health care in the United States. Understanding where the shopping model came from, why it was so long resisted in medicine, and why it finally triumphed in the late twentieth century helps explain why, despite striking changes that seem to empower patients, so many Americans remain unhappy and confused about their status as patients today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The US government is laboring under an enormous debt burden, one that will impact the living standards of future generations of Americans by limiting investment in people and infrastructure. In his new book, Fiscal Therapy: Curing America's Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future (Oxford University Press, 2019), Brookings Institution senior scholar William Gale tackles the challenge head on, addressing what needs to happen to healthcare spending, Social Security, individual taxes, and corporate taxes, in order to make the numbers add up. It makes for sober reading, and the longer we wait, the worse the situation becomes. And the key challenge may not even be fiscal, but political, as the disagreements in Washington over the debt are as deep as the debt is large. Gale ends by making a few simple, inside-Washington suggestions as to how he thinks the political impasse can be broken.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Christof Spieler, PE, LEED AP, is a Vice President and Director of Planning at Huitt-Zollars and a lecturer in Architecture and Engineering at Rice University. He was a member of the board of directors of Houston METRO from 2010-2018, where he oversaw a complete redesign of the bus network that has resulted in Houston being one of the few US cities that are increasing transit ridership.His Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit (Island Press, 2018) is a fascinating book about “How To” develop better transportation modes for US cities and urban areas. Christof has put assembled a dense amount of research with maps, diagrams, and images to demonstrate the successes and lessons learned from US transit. This is a must read book for anyone interested in urban planning, landscape architecture, and the design of our cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard (Columbia University Press 2015, paperback 2018), Jill Stauffer argues that survivors of unjust treatment and dehumanization can experience further harm when individuals and institutions will not or cannot hear the survivors’ claims about what they suffered and what they are owed for having suffered. She calls this further harm “ethical loneliness.” With Stauffer’s analysis, the harm of ethical loneliness can lead us to rethink how we understand responsibility for harm, the work of repair, the role of retribution in repair, and how we are constituted as subjects such that we are capable of striving to undo unjust deeds, even mass atrocities. Focused on hearing and what practices of hearing justice demands, Stauffer looks to survivors’ stories to analyze how the harm of ethical loneliness can be inflicted, even by people with intentions to help and survivors. She then shows how revisionary and reparative work can be done to hear those stories with an ear to how the world may need to change in light of survivors’ claims. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Scholars and pundits have been busy trying to assess the legacy of President Barack Obama. Few have done so with the nuance and comparative approach of Andra Gillespie. In her new book Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope (Manchester University Press, 2019), she examines the promotion of the substantive and symbolic initiatives for blacks. She compares Obama to Presidents Bush and Clinton to assess whether the election of a black president actually changed the status of blacks in the United States.Gillespie is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University and previous published The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy