Reforms at Risk is the first book to closely examine what happens to sweeping and seemingly successful policy reforms after they are passed. Most books focus on the politics of reform adoption, yet as Eric Patashnik shows here, the political struggle does not end when major reforms become enacted. Why do certain highly praised policy reforms endure while others are quietly reversed or eroded away? Patashnik peers into some of the most critical arenas of domestic-policy reform--including taxes, agricultural subsidies, airline deregulation, emissions trading, welfare state reform, and reform of government procurement--to identify the factors that enable reform measures to survive. He argues that the reforms that stick destroy an existing policy subsystem and reconfigure the political dynamic. Patashnik demonstrates that sustainable reforms create positive policy feedbacks, transform institutions, and often unleash the ''creative destructiveness'' of market forces. Reforms at Risk debunks the argument that reforms inevitably fail because Congress is prey to special interests, and the book provides a more realistic portrait of the possibilities and limits of positive change in American government. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wants to ensure that hard-fought reform victories survive.

List of Figures and Tables ixAcknowledgments xi
Chapter 1: Introduction: General-Interest Policymaking and the Politics of Reform Sustainability 1
Chapter 2: Policy Reform as a Political Project 16
Chapter 3: Expert Ideas Meet Politics: Reforming the Tax Code 35
Chapter 4: Reforming the Agricultural Welfare State: The Mixed Case of the Freedom to Farm Act 55
Chapter 5: Reforming the American Welfare State: ERISA and the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act 72
Chapter 6: Uncle Sam Goes Shopping: Reinventing Government Procurement 91
Chapter 7: Unshackling an Unstable Industry: Airline Deregulation 110
Chapter 8: Making Pollution Control Pay: Emissions Trading for Acid Rain 136
Chapter 9: Conclusions: The Patterns and Paradoxes of Policy Reform 155
Notes 181
Index 229