Aaron Wildavsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 3609301 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aaron Wildavsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aaron |
| FAMILY NAME | Wildavsky |
| SIGNATURE | WILDAVSKY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 158 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1699 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 158 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1955 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Urban Outcomes: Schools, Streets, and Libraries
Theories of Risk Perception: Who Fears What and Why
In social science rival theories seeking to answer the same questions rarely confront one another. Indeed, a variety of perspectives has been employed in research on public perception of risk, but alternative formulations remain largely untested. Missing most of all is a focused comparison of rival hypotheses. One could hardly find many subjects that are better known or considered more important to more people nowadays than the controversies over…
Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do. Some dangers are unknown; others are known, but not by us because no one person can know everything. Most people cannot be aware of most dangers at most times. Hence, no one can calculate precisely the total risk to be faced. How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore? On what basis are certain dangers guarded against and…
The Revolt Against the Masses: And Other Essays on Politics and Public Policy
"The author of this stunning set of essays on politics and public policy makes crystal clear the meaning of the title. "The revolutionaries of contemporary America do not seek to redistribute privilege from those who have it to those who do not. These radicals wish to arrange a transfer of power from those elites who now exercise it to another elite, namely themselves, who do not. This aspiring elite is of the same race (white), the same class (u…
On the Social Construction of Distinctions: Risk, Rape, Public Goods, and Altruism
This chapter describes well-known distinctions with powerful implications for public policy. It includes the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy to explain the relative acceptability of risks, consent versus coercion in sexual relations, the justification of governmental action based on the dichotomy between public and private goods, and the long-standing efforts to distinguish between selfishness and altruism as a moral basis for evaluating behavior…
Cultural Theory
Why do people want what they want? Why does one person see the world as a place to control, while another feels controlled by the world? A useful theory of culture, the authors contend, should start with these questions, and the answers, given different historical conditions, should apply equally well to people of all times, places, and walks of life.Taking their cue from the pioneering work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, the authors of Cultural…
Culture and Social Theory
Aaron Wildavsky, along with Mary Douglas, identified what they called grid-group theory. Wildavsky began calling this and applied it to an astounding array of subjects. The essays in this volume exemplify the theory's potential contributions to three seemingly disparate, but related, areas: the social construction of meaning, normative/analytic political philosophy, and a theory of rational choices. This book is the first in a series of Aaron Wil…
The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis
Broadening the Contours in the Study of Black Politics: Political Development and Black Women
"Broadening the Contours in the Study of Black Politics, volume 17 of the National Political Science Review (NPSR), is divided thematically into two books, available separately or as a set. The first concentrates on the institutional aspects of Black politics. The second book addresses various dimensions of social capital that constitute the fundamental building blocks of Black politics. Each contains peer reviewed articles, a symposium section, …
Section News
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Pi Sigma Alpha Names Award Winners
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But Is It True: A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues
Introduction - toward a citizen's understanding of science and technology. Part 1 Were the early scare justified by the evidence?, cranberries, dieldrin, saccharin the Cranberry scare of 1959 silent spring and dieldrin the saccharin debate. Part 2 PCBs and DDT - too much of a good thing?: which regulations governing PCB residues are justified? is DDT a chemical of ill repute?. Part 3 Dioxin, agent orange, and times beach. Part 4 Love canal - was …
Politically correct hiring Will Destroy higher education
Aaron Wildavsky, a founder and president of the California Association of Scholars, died on September 4, at the much too early age of 63. Professor Wildavsky's life exemplified a total commitment to the university, and his achievements were prodigious. He authored or edited, alone or with colleagues, some three dozen books, and he wrote hundreds of articles. In the thirty years he spent at Berkeley, he was at various times chairman of the Departm…
Reply to Cornes and Sandler
Reply to Comedy of the Cowpats
Why Self-Interest Means Less Outside of a Social Context: Cultural Contributions to a Theory of Rational Choices
Rational choice theories could be improved, their scope broadened, and their explanations made more powerful by asking not only `How do people go about getting what they know they want?' but also `Why do people want what they want in the first place?'. The advantages of combining a theory of goal direction, which is the operational base of rational choice, and a theory of preference formation are manifold: a monistic conception of cause as self-i…
Who laughs at what
Apsa Awards and Recipients
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The ‘Multicultural’ Mill
An argument has been made for identifying Mill as an individualistic thinker. Certainly, A System of Logic (1843) develops views, such as methodological individualism and a conception of the ‘art of life’, which portray persons as having unique essences that, when supported by autonomous choices with respect to life experiments, reveal their individuality. These views are at least loosely applied in later works. Principles of Political Economy (1…
The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism
The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/Zones of Turmoil
Part 1 The real world order: a tale of two worlds democracy and modern wealth are new in the world zones of turmoil and development what difference do nuclear weapons make? what the last world order left behind. Part 2 New policy thinking for the real world order: supranations and subnations - rebirth of federalisms policy for the zones of turmoil and development shaping US policy on intervention American foreign policy for the real world order
Norms and Rules to Facilitate Convergence on Budget Balance
In the past, budget balance, outside of war and depression, was informally but effectively coordinated by classical budgetary norms-annularity, comprehensiveness and balance. In our time, these norms have broken down. Entitlements, the largest part of expenditures, violate all three norms: annularity, as they are not renewed every year; comprehensiveness, from the growth of trust funds and earmarked (the European hypothetical revenues) spending, …
Democracy as a coalition of cultures
Are American Political Parties Pretty Much the Same as They Used to Be in the 1950s, Only a Little Different, or Are They Radically Different? A Review Essay
In the last fifteen years or so I have found myself at odds with friends, colleagues, and other luminaries over whether the changes among political activists within the major political parties are real but modest in their impact or whether, as I believe, the changes are fundamental. Most commentaries on political parties by pundits and political scientists give no clue that anything fundamental has occurred. The Democratic party is described as i…
Building Better Comparative Social Theory through Alternative Conceptions of Rationality: A Review Essay
Charles Lockhart, Richard M. Coughlin, Building Better Comparative Social Theory through Alternative Conceptions of Rationality: A Review Essay, The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 793-809
Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do. Some dangers are unknown; others are known, but not by us because no one person can know everything. Most people cannot be aware of most dangers at most times. Hence, no one can calculate precisely the total risk to be faced. How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore? On what basis are certain dangers guarded against and…
Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation
Preferences come from the most ubiquitous human activity: living with other people. Support for and opposition to different ways of life, the shared values legitimating social relations (here called cultures) are the generators of diverse preferences. After discussing why it is not helpful to conceive of interests as preferences or to dismiss preference formation as external to organized social life, I explain how people are able to develop many …
A Theory of the Budgetary Process
There are striking regularities in the budgetary process. The evidence from over half of the non-defense agencies indicates that the behavior of the budgetary process of the United States government results in aggregate decisions similar to those produced by a set of simple decision rules that are linear and temporally stable. For the agencies considered, certain equations are specified and compared with data composed of agency requests (through …
If planning is everything, maybe it's nothing
The Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy Inside British Politics
Towards A Predictive Theory of Government Expenditure: Us Domestic Appropriations
The project on which this paper reports is aimed not only at increased understanding of the United States federal budget process, but also at predicting government expenditures in total and by bureau with a view to their determination within United States national econometric models. Estimates of likely expenditures using standard econometric techniques are poor, both in absolute terms and in comparison with our own work. Management of the econom…
The Two Presidencies: Presidential power is greatest when directing military and foreign policy
On Change: Or, There is No Magic Size for An Increment
In this article we identify incrementalism in budgetary processes with regularity in the annual change in the appropriation, and non-incrementalism with irregularity in the annual appropriation change. This definition focusses interest on structural changes in the underlying budget processes. These changes may be isolated using a combination of statistical and more conventional techniques. Other meanings of incremental, we argue, are appropriate …
Political Culture and Political Preferences
Aaron Wildavsky has argued that it is theoretically more useful to think of political preferences as rooted in political culture than to entertain alternative bases such as schemas or ideologies. In the APSA presidential address in which he made his case, Wildavsky also advocated a program of research on political cultures, and welcomed "challenges and improvements." David Laitin accepts the invitation; he variously takes issue with Wildavsky's c…
If Dissemination Is the Solution, What Is the Problem
Why the Traditional Distinction between Public and Private Goods Should be Abandoned
In this paper we challenge the traditional distinction between public goods and private goods. Economists use a definition of public goods that rests on the inherent properties of the good itself. Referring to criteria such as non-rivalness and non-excludability, they assert that the distinction is fixed in nature and cannot be altered by human observes. We argue that the boundary between public and private goods is socially constructed. That is,…
Why Self-Interest Means Less Outside of a Social Context: Cultural Contributions to a Theory of Rational Choices
Rational choice theories could be improved, their scope broadened, and their explanations made more powerful by asking not only `How do people go about getting what they know they want?' but also `Why do people want what they want in the first place?'. The advantages of combining a theory of goal direction, which is the operational base of rational choice, and a theory of preference formation are manifold: a monistic conception of cause as self-i…
The Goldwater Phenomenon: Purists, Politicians, and the Two-Party System
THE Goldwater phenomenon is the great mystery of American politics. His nomination as presidential candidate by the Republican Party and his campaign for election have profoundly challenged accepted theories of American politics. Merely to enumerate some of the puzzling questions suggests how badly we need explanations
Requisites of Radical Reform: Income Maintenance versus Tax Preferences
Why did tax reform succeed in gaining passage while the family assistance plan failed? Using cultural theory, we argue that the active consent of elites from three political cultures is required before radical policy proposals will win political support in America. Although the Nixon administration cast the income maintenance plan in integrative terms-support for the family-it failed because egalitarian leaders demanded more. Tax reform succeeded…
A Methodological Critique of Duverger's Political Parties
The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism
A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War
Any basic interpretation of American history,' one prominent historian contends, 'will have to account for...the coming of the Civil War.' Yet the two basic interpretations that have dominated the study of American politics, the progressive and consensus paradigms, have spawned partial and unsatisfactory explanations for what is arguably the most central event in the American past. After briefly analyzing the insights and limitations of these app…
The Analysis of Issue-Contexts in the Study of Decision-Making
Indispensable Framework or Just another Ideology: Prisoner's Dilemma as an Antihierarchical Game
Is Prisoner's Dilemma a natural framework for understanding human interaction? The author's view is that the rationality of the prisoner's dilemma, like rationality in general, is context dependent; without a supportive cultural context, no strategy makes sense. Different strategies will be rational for prisoners within different cultural contexts. The solution favored by most game players, namely, silence, for instance, would be anathema in a hi…
The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers
Aaron Wildavsky and the Demise of Incrementalism
Can norms rescue self‐interest or macro explanation be joined to micro explanation
In three recent books, Jon Elster continues the project that began when he showed that Marxism lacked micro foundations. This project is the use of methodologically individualistic assumptions to understand social behavior. In his latest work, however, he supplements rational choice theory by means of non‐rational "norms," begging the question of the sources and possible variations among these "given" individual value‐preferences. This move invit…
A poverty of distinction: From economic homogeneity to cultural heterogeneity in the classification of poor people
Democracy as a coalition of cultures
Reconsidering the two presidencies
Housing and Slum Clearance Under the American Federal System
Studies in Australian Politics: The 1926 Referendum
A Methodological Critique of Duverger's Political Parties
Studies in Australian Politics. The 1926 Referendum
TVA and Power Politics
The passage of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Revenue Bond Act in 1959 ended a quarter of a century during which the Authority was dependent upon Congressional appropriations to supply the capital investment for its growing electric power facilities. This development marked the first appearance of consensus in the long conflict over the role of TVA in the national economy. The consensus emerged from an impasse between TVA's lack of support …
Political Implications of Budgetary Reform
Studies in Australian Politics
Dixon-Yates: A Study in Power Politics
On the Superiority of National Conventions
The appraisal of national conventions as mechanisms for nominating presidents involves many problems of political theory. Who should be entrusted with the task of nomination? Can we reconcile the desirability of popular participation with the need for maintaining a strong party leadership? To what extent does the nominating convention contribute to the maintenance of the political system in which it is imbedded? Does the apparent lack of decorum …
The Analysis of Issue-Contexts in the Study of Decision-Making
Dixon-Yates: A Study in Power Politics
Atlanta to "Oretown"-Identifying Community Elites
The Goldwater Phenomenon: Purists, Politicians, and the Two-Party System
THE Goldwater phenomenon is the great mystery of American politics. His nomination as presidential candidate by the Republican Party and his campaign for election have profoundly challenged accepted theories of American politics. Merely to enumerate some of the puzzling questions suggests how badly we need explanations
Practical Consequences of the Theoretical Study of Defense Policy
The Revolution in Fiscal Theory
Leadership in a Small Town
On the process of budgeting: An empirical study of congressional appropriation
The Political Economy of Efficiency: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Program Budgeting
The Two Presidencies: Presidential power is greatest when directing military and foreign policy
A Theory of the Budgetary Process
There are striking regularities in the budgetary process. The evidence from over half of the non-defense agencies indicates that the behavior of the budgetary process of the United States government results in aggregate decisions similar to those produced by a set of simple decision rules that are linear and temporally stable. For the agencies considered, certain equations are specified and compared with data composed of agency requests (through …
The Power of the Purse. Richard F. Fenno, Jr
News & Notes
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Elections and The Political Order
The last section of a well-known earlier production by the same team of University of Michigan psephologists, The American Voter, bore the title, 'The Electoral Decision and the Political System'. It was a short section, which tentatively advanced a few suggestions and frankly recognized the need for further work, focused on the consequences of the electoral process, as against its makings in the personality and the group affiliations of individu…
Richard Nixon, president of the United States: And unless Nixon does win, says a political scientist, the two-party system might very well break down
Proposals which the Essayists Considered
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Political science (115 works) · Law (77 works) · Sociology (65 works) · Politics (54 works) · Economics (50 works) · Law (46 works) · Computer Science (38 works) · Public Administration (35 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Business (29 works)