Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 184 pages
- Published by: University Of Chicago Press April 15, 1986
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0226572013
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0226572017
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6 x 0.5 inches
- Weighs: 8.8 ounces
Product Description
In this absorbing story of how child abuse grew from a small, private-sector charity concern into a multimillion-dollar social welfare issue, Barbara Nelson provides important new perspectives on the process of public agenda setting. Using extensive personal interviews and detailed archival research, she reconstructs an invaluable history of child abuse policy in America. She shows how the mass media presented child abuse to the public, how government agencies acted and interacted, and how state and national legislatures were spurred to strong action on this issue. Nelson looks at prevailing theories about agenda setting and introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding how a social issue becomes part of the public agenda. This issue of child abuse, she argues, clearly reveals the scope and limitations of social change initiated through interest-group politics. Unfortunately, the process that transforms an issue into a popular cause, Nelson concludes, brings about programs that ultimately address only the symptoms and not the roots of such social problems.
About The Author
Barbara J. Nelson was professor of political science and co-director of the Center on Women and Public Policy at the
University of Minnesota.
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