The authors seek to explain why the inner city has remained on the agenda of British governments since the 1960s. Several factors suggest that government attention to the issue should wane over time: the absence of a strong constituency, limited salience to the state's core interests, and the relative failure of past policy. In fact, top government ministers and senior officials have played an active role in maintaining the issue on the agenda. To explain the continued visibility of this issue, one must consider the moral dimension of policy making along with theories of agenda setting.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Atkinson, R. , and G. Moon. 1994. Urban policy in Britain: The city, the state, and the market. London: Macmillan.
2.
Audit Commission . 1989. Urban regeneration and economic development: The local government dimension. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
3.
Barnekov, T. , R. Boyle, and D. Rich. 1989. Privatism and urban policy in Britain and the United States. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.
4.
Baumgartner, F. R. , and B. Jones. 1993. Agendas and instability in American politics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
5.
Beetham, D.1991. The legitimation of power. London: Macmillan.
6.
Brindley, T. , Y. Rydin, and G. Stoker. 1989. Remaking planning: The politics of urban change in the Thatcher years. London: Unwin Hyman.
7.
Cobb, R. W. and C. D. Elder. 1981. Communication and public policy. In Handbook of political communication, edited by D. Nimmo and K. Sanders, 391-415. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
8.
Cobb, R. W. and C. D. Elder. 1983. Participation in American politics: The dynamics of agenda-building. 2d ed.Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
9.
Cobb, R. W. , M. H. Ross, and J. K. Ross. 1976. Agenda building as a comparative political process. American Political Science Review70 (2): 126-138.
10.
Cohen, A. P.1975. The management of myths: The politics of legitimation in a Newfoundland community. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
11.
Cohen, S.1980. Folk devils and moral panics. 2d ed.Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
12.
Deakin, N. , and J. Edwards. 1993. The enterprise culture and the inner city. London: Routledge.
13.
Downs, A.1972. Up and down with ecology: The issue attention cycle. The Public Interest28:38-50.
14.
Durham, M.1991. Sex and politics: The family and morality in the Thatcher years. London: Macmillan.
15.
Edelman, M.1964. The symbolic uses of politics. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
16.
Eyestone, R.1978. From social issues to public policy. New York: John Wiley.
17.
Fischer, F. , and J. Forester. 1993. Editors' introduction. In The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning, edited by F. Fischer and J. Forester, 1-7. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
18.
Gurr, T. R. , and D. S. King. 1987. The state and the city. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
19.
Gusfield, J. R.1972. Symbolic crusade: Status politics and the American temperance movement. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
20.
Hajer, M.1993. Discourse coalitions and the institutionalization of practice: The case of acid rain in Great Britain. In The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning, edited by F. Fischer and J. Forester, 63-77. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
21.
Hambleton, R.1990. Urban government in the 1990's: Lessons from the USA. Bristol, UK: School for Advanced Urban Studies.
22.
Hambleton, R. 1993. Evaluating urban policy-Lessons from the UK. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Urban Affairs Association, Indianapolis, 21-24 April.
23.
Her Majesty's Stationery Office . 1988. Action for cities. London: Author.
24.
Kingdon, J. W.1995. Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. 2d ed.New York: HarperCollins.
25.
Lawless, P.1989. Britain's inner cities. London: Paul Chapman.
26.
March, J. G. , and J. P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering institutions: The organizational basis of politics. New York: Free Press.
27.
Marsh, D. , P. Gowin, and M. Read. 1984. Private members' bills and moral panic: The case of the video recordings bill. Parliamentary Affairs39 (2): 179-196.
28.
May, P. J.1991. Reconsidering policy design: Policies and publics. Journal of Public Policy11 (2): 187-206.
29.
McKay, D. , and Cox, A. W.1979. The politics of urban change. London: Croom Helm.
30.
Parkinson, M.1990. Political responses to urban restructuring: The British experience under Thatcherism. In Beyond the city limits: Urban policy and economic restructuring in comparative perspective, edited by J. R. Logan and T. Swanstrom, 86-116. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.
31.
Rhodes, R.A.W.1988. Beyond Westminster and Whitehall: The sub-central governments of Britain. London: Unwin Hyman.
32.
Rhodes, R.A.W. , and D. Marsh. 1992. New directions in the study of policy networks. European Journal of Political Research21:181-205.
33.
Robson, B.1988. Those inner cities. Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
34.
Robson, B. , M. Bradford, I. Deas, E. Hall, E. Harrison, M. Parkinson, R. Evans, P. Garde, A. Harding, and F. Robinson. 1994. Assessing the impact of urban policy. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
35.
Sills, A. , G. Taylor, and P. Golding. 1988. The politics of the urban crisis. London: Hutchinson Education.
36.
Smith, M.1993. Pressure, power and policy: State autonomy and policy networks in Britain and the United States. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press.
37.
Solesbury, W.1991. Urban policy in retrospective: Thoughts of a practitioner. OxfordUniversity, Oxford, UK. Typed manuscript.
38.
Solesbury, W.1993. Reframing urban policy. Policy and Politics21 (2): 31-38.
39.
Stewart, M.1987. Ten years of inner cities policy. Town Planning Review58 (2): 129-145.
40.
Stoker, G.1991. The politics of local government. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
41.
Stoker, G. , and S. Young. 1993. Cities in the 1990'. Harlow, UK: Longman.
42.
Studlar, D. T. , and Z. Layton-Henry. 1990. Nonwhite minority access to the political agenda in Britain. Policy Studies Review9 (2): 273-293.
43.
Willmott, P. , and R. Hutchison. 1992. Urban trends I: A report on Britain'S deprived urban areas. London: Policy Studies Institute.
44.
Wolman, H.1992. Understanding cross national policy transfers: The case of Britain and the US. Governance5:27-45.
45.
Wolman, H. , and M. Goldsmith. 1992. Urban politics and policy: A comparative approach. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
