Many of our most urgent national problems suggest a widespread lack of concern for the future. Alarming economic conditions, such as low national savings rates, declining corporate investment in long-term capital projects, and ballooning private and public debt are matched by such social ills as diminished educational achievement, environmental degradation, and high rates of infant mortality, crime, and teenage pregnancy. At the heart of all these troubles lies an important behavioral phenomenon: in the role of consumer, manager, voter, student, or parent, many Americans choose inferior but immediate rewards over greater long-term benefits.

Choice Over Time offers a rich sampling of original research on intertemporal choice—how and why people decide between immediate and delayed consequences—from a broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. George Loewenstein, Jon Elster, and their distinguished colleagues review existing theories and forge new approaches to understanding significant questions: Why do people seem to "discount" future benefits? Do individuals use the same decision-making strategy in all aspects of their lives? What part is played by situational factors such as the certainty of delayed consequences? How are decisions affected by personal factors such as willpower and taste?

In addressing these issues, the contributors to Choice Over Time address many social, economic, psychological, and personal time problems. Their work demonstrates the predictive power of short-term preferences in behavior as varied as addiction and phobia, the effect of prices on consumption, and the dramatic rise in debt and decline in savings. Choice Over Time provides an essential source for the most recent research and theory on intertemporal choice, offering new models for time preference patterns—and their aberrations—and presenting a diversity of potential solutions to the problem of "temporal myopia."

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is professor of economics and psychology, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

JON ELSTER is Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: George Ainslie, Gary S. Becker, Robert H. Frank, Michael Grossman, Nick Haslam, Richard J. Herrnstein, Walter Mishel, Kevin M. Murphy, Drazen Prelec, Howard Rachlin, Andres Raineri, Monica L. Rodriquez, Thomas Schelling, Hersh M. Shefrin, Yuichi Shoda, Richard H. Thaler.

Winner of the 1980 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Winner of the 1981 Gladys M. Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association

Winner of the 1999 Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award from the Policy Studies Organization

First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare, social services, education, and law enforcement is as urgent as ever. In this thirtieth anniversary expanded edition, Michael Lipsky revisits the territory he mapped out in the first edition to reflect on significant policy developments over the last several decades. Despite the difficulties of managing these front-line workers, he shows how street-level bureaucracies can be and regularly are brought into line with public purposes.

Street-level bureaucrats—from teachers and police officers to social workers and legal-aid lawyers—interact directly with the public and so represent the frontlines of government policy. In Street-Level Bureaucracy, Lipsky argues that these relatively low-level public service employees labor under huge caseloads, ambiguous agency goals, and inadequate resources. When combined with substantial discretionary authority and the requirement to interpret policy on a case-by-case basis, the difference between government policy in theory and policy in practice can be substantial and troubling.

The core dilemma of street-level bureaucrats is that they are supposed to help people or make decisions about them on the basis of individual cases, yet the structure of their jobs makes this impossible. Instead, they are forced to adopt practices such as rationing resources, screening applicants for qualities their organizations favor, “rubberstamping” applications, and routinizing client interactions by imposing the uniformities of mass processing on situations requiring human responsiveness. Occasionally, such strategies work out in favor of the client. But the cumulative effect of street-level decisions made on the basis of routines and simplifications about clients can reroute the intended direction of policy, undermining citizens’ expectations of evenhanded treatment.

This seminal, award-winning study tells a cautionary tale of how decisions made by overburdened workers translate into ad-hoc policy adaptations that impact peoples’ lives and life opportunities. Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.

MICHAEL LIPSKY is senior program director of Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization, and an affiliate professor at Georgetown University.

Given the increasing diversity of the nation—particularly with respect to its growing Hispanic and Asian populations—why does racial and ethnic difference so often lead to disadvantage? In The Colors of Poverty, a multidisciplinary group of experts provides a breakthrough analysis of the complex mechanisms that connect poverty and race.

The Colors of Poverty reframes the debate over the causes of minority poverty by emphasizing the cumulative effects of disadvantage in perpetuating poverty across generations. The contributors consider a kaleidoscope of factors that contribute to widening racial gaps, including education, racial discrimination, social capital, immigration, and incarceration. Michèle Lamont and Mario Small grapple with the theoretical ambiguities of existing cultural explanations for poverty disparities.  They argue that culture and structure are not competing explanations for poverty, but rather collaborate to produce disparities. Looking at how attitudes and beliefs exacerbate racial stratification, social psychologist Heather Bullock links the rise of inequality in the United States to an increase in public tolerance for disparity. She suggests that the American ethos of rugged individualism and meritocracy erodes support for antipoverty programs and reinforces the belief that people are responsible for their own poverty. Sociologists Darren Wheelock and Christopher Uggen focus on the collateral consequences of incarceration in exacerbating racial disparities and are the first to propose a link between legislation that blocks former drug felons from obtaining federal aid for higher education and the black/white educational attainment gap. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the increasingly decentralized and discretionary nature of state welfare programs allows for different treatment of racial groups, even when such policies are touted as “race-neutral.” They find that states with more blacks and Hispanics on welfare rolls are consistently more likely to impose lifetime limits, caps on benefits for mothers with children, and stricter sanctions.

The Colors of Poverty is a comprehensive and evocative introduction to the dynamics of race and inequality. The research in this landmark volume moves scholarship on inequality beyond a simple black-white paradigm, beyond the search for a single cause of poverty, and beyond the promise of one “magic bullet” solution.

ANN CHIH LIN is associate professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan.

DAVID R. HARRIS is professor of sociology and deputy provost at Cornell University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Scott W. Allard, Heather E. Bullock, George Farkas, David R. Harris, Michèle Lamont, Ann Chih Lin, Selina A. Mohammed, Devah Pager, Lincoln Quillian, Rozlyn Reed, Sanford F. Schram, Mario Luis Small, Joe Soss, Michael A. Stoll, Christopher Uggen, Darren Wheelock, and David R. Williams

A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

How diverse can, and should, TV programming be? And especially, in what precise ways does governmental regulation of TV affect (or fail to affect) the programs station owners produce—programs which, in the final analysis, shape in such large measure the values of Americans? It is to these timely and beguiling questions that Harvey Levin addresses his dispassionate assessment of the complex relationship between government and the TV industry. Analyzing data drawn from the history of the FCC's regulatory decisions, as well as from interviews with numerous government and industry officials, Professor Levin shows how the present form of restrictive governmental regulation almost always results in higher profits and rents for TV stations, with no concomitant increase in programming diversity.

In addition, Professor Levin investigates various other aspects of the media market, from the particular kinds of crucial decisions that are made when, for example, a newspaper owns a TV station, to the kinds of problems that arise when commercial rents are taxed to fund public TV; from the brand of programming we are offered when a monopoly controls a given TV market to the nature of programming in a situation of steady and fair competition. Following a comprehensive assessment, the author makes a compelling case for diversification of station ownership, in order to be "safe rather than sorry." He also argues for the entry of new stations, more extensive support of public TV, and some form of quantitative program requirements—all of which will help bring about greater program diversity.

Professor Levin's volume provides us with a fully documented and sharply focused analysis of the theories, policies, and problems of one of the most powerful and misunderstood of contemporary institutions.

HARVEY J. LEVIN is professor of economics at Hofstra University and senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research.

What are the essential elements of a democracy? How can nations ensure a political voice for all citizens, and design a government that will respond to those varied voices? These perennial questions resonate strongly in the midst of ongoing struggles to defend democratic institutions around the world and here at home. In Designing Democratic Government, a group of distinguished political scientists provides a landmark cross-national analysis of the institutions that either facilitate or constrain the healthy development of democracy.

The contributors to Designing Democratic Government use the democratic ideals of fairness, competitiveness, and accountability as benchmarks to assess a wide variety of institutions and practices. John Leighly and Jonathan Nagler find that in the U.S., the ability to mobilize voters across socioeconomic lines largely hinges on the work of non-party groups such as civic associations and unions, which are far less likely than political parties to engage in class-biased outreach efforts. Michael McDonald assesses congressional redistricting methods and finds that court-ordered plans and close adherence to the Voting Rights Act effectively increase the number of competitive electoral districts, while politically-drawn maps reduce the number of competitive districts. John Carey and John Polga-Hecimovich challenge the widespread belief that primary elections produce inferior candidates. Analyzing three decades worth of comprehensive data on Latin American presidential campaigns, they find that primaries impart a stamp of legitimacy on candidates, helping to engage voters and mitigate distrust in the democratic process. And Kanchan Chandra proposes a paradigm shift in the way we think about ethnic inclusion in democracies: nations should design institutions that actively promote—rather than merely accommodate—diversity.

At a moment when democracy seems vulnerable both at home and abroad, Designing Democratic Government sorts through a complex array of practices and institutions to outline what works and what doesn’t in new and established democracies alike. The result is a volume that promises to change the way we look at the ideals of democracy worldwide.

MARGARET LEVI is Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies of the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.

JAMES JOHNSON teaches social and political theory at the University of Rochester.

JACK KNIGHT is professor of law and political science at Duke University.

SUSAN STOKES is John S. Sadden Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Susan A. Banducci, Shaun Bowler, Henry E. Brady, Thomas L. Brunell, John M. Carey, Kanchan Chandra, Todd Donovan, David L. Epstein, Bernard Grofman, Iris Hui, James Johnson, Jeffrey A. Karp, Jack Knight, Jan E. Leighley, Margaret Levi, David Lublin, Michael P. McDonald, Jonathan Nagler, Sharyn O'Halloran, John Polga-Hecimovich, Gary Segura, Charles Stewart III, and Susan Stokes.

As the United States wages war on terrorism, the country's attention is riveted on the Muslim world as never before. While many cursory press accounts dealing with Muslims in the United States have been published since 9/11, few people are aware of the wealth of scholarly research already available on the American Islamic population. In Muslims in the United States: The State of Research, Karen Isaksen Leonard mines this rich vein of research to provide a fascinating overview of the history and contemporary situation of American Muslim communities.

Leonard describes how Islam, never a monolithic religion, has inevitably been shaped by its experience on American soil. American Muslims are a religious minority, and arbiters of Islamic cultural values and jurisprudence must operate within the framework of America's secular social and legal codes, while coping with the ethnic differences among Muslim groups that have long divided their communities. Arab Muslims tend to dominate mosque functions and teaching Arabic and the Qur'an, whereas South Asian Muslims have often focused on the regional and national mobilization of Muslims around religious and political issues. By the end of the 20th century, however, many Muslim immigrants had become American citizens, prompting greater interchange among these groups and bridging some cultural differences.

African American Muslims remain the most isolated group—a minority within a minority. Many African American men have converted to Islam while in prison, leading to a special concern among African American Muslims for civil and religious rights within the prison system. Leonard highlights the need to expand our knowledge of African American Muslim movements, which are often not regarded as legitimate by immigrant Muslims. Leonard explores the construction of contemporary American Muslim identities, examining such factors as gender, sexuality, race, class, and generational differences within the many smaller national origin and sectarian Muslim communities, including secular Muslims, Sufis, and fundamentalists.

Muslims in the United States provides a thorough account of the impact of September 11th on the Muslim community. Before the terrorist attacks, Muslim leaders had been mostly optimistic, envisioning a growing role for Muslims in U.S. society. Afterward, despite a brave show of unity and support for the nation, Muslim organizations became more open in showing their own conflicts and divisions and more vocal in opposing militant Islamic ideologies.

By providing a concise summary of significant historical and contemporary research on Muslims in the United States, this volume will become an essential resource for both the scholar and the general reader interested in understanding the diverse communities that constitute Muslim America.

KAREN ISAKSEN LEONARD is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

The positive social benefits of low unemployment are many—it helps to reduce poverty and crime and fosters more stable families and communities. Yet conventional wisdom—born of the stagflation of the 1970s—holds that sustained low unemployment rates run the risk of triggering inflation. The last five years of the 1990s—in which unemployment plummeted and inflation remained low—called this conventional wisdom into question. The Roaring Nineties provides a thorough review of the exceptional economic performance of the late 1990s and asks whether it was due to a lucky combination of economic circumstances or whether the new economy has somehow wrought a lasting change in the inflation-safe rate of unemployment.

Led by distinguished economists Alan Krueger and Robert Solow, a roster of twenty-six respected economic experts analyzes the micro- and macroeconomic factors that led to the unexpected coupling of low unemployment and low inflation. The more macroeconomically oriented chapters clearly point to a reduction in the inflation-safe rate of unemployment. Laurence Ball and Robert Moffitt see the slow adjustment of workers' wage aspirations in the wake of rising productivity as a key factor in keeping inflation at bay. And Alan Blinder and Janet Yellen credit sound monetary policy by the Federal Reserve Board with making the best of fortunate circumstances, such as lower energy costs, a strong dollar, and a booming stock market.

Other chapters in The Roaring Nineties examine how the interaction between macroeconomic and labor market conditions helped sustain high employment growth and low inflation. Giuseppe Bertola, Francine Blau, and Lawrence M. Kahn demonstrate how greater flexibility in the U.S. labor market generated more jobs in this country than in Europe, but at the expense of greater earnings inequality. David Ellwood examines the burgeoning shortage of skilled workers, and suggests policies—such as tax credits for businesses that provide on-the-job-training—to address the problem. And James Hines, Hilary Hoynes, and Alan Krueger elaborate the benefits of sustained low unemployment, including budget surpluses that can finance public infrastructure and social welfare benefits—a perspective often lost in the concern over higher inflation rates.

While none of these analyses promise that the good times of the 1990s will last forever, The Roaring Nineties provides a unique analysis of recent economic history, demonstrating how the nation capitalized on a lucky confluence of economic factors, helping to create the longest peacetime boom in American history.

ROBERT SOLOW is Institute Professor Emeritus, M.I.T., and a Nobel laureate in economics.

ALAN KRUEGER is professor of economics at Princeton University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Katharine G. Abraham, Laurence Ball, Giusepe Bertola, Rebecca M. Blank,  Francine D. Blau,  Alan S. Blinder,  Jessica Cohen,  William T. Dickens,  David T. Ellwood,  James R. Hines Jr., Hilary W. Hoynes,  George Johnson,  Lawrence M. Kahn,  Lisa M. Lynch, Robert Moffitt, Stephen J. Nickell,  Adam Posen,  Matthew D. Shapiro,  Robert Shimer,  Matthew J. Slaughter,  Douglas Staiger,  James H. Stock, Janet L. Yellen, Mark W. Watson.

Copublished with The Century Foundation

Winner of the 2010 Best Book Award from the Political Economy of World Systems Section of the American Sociological Association

Despite the vast expansion of global markets during the last half of the twentieth century, social science still most often examines and measures inequality and social mobility within individual nations rather than across national boundaries. Every country has both rich and poor populations making demands—via institutions, political processes, or even conflict—on how their resources will be distributed. But shifts in inequality in one country can precipitate accompanying shifts in another. Unveiling Inequality authors Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and Timothy Patrick Moran make the case that within-country analyses alone have not adequately illuminated our understanding of global stratification. The authors present a comprehensive new framework that moves beyond national boundaries to analyze economic inequality and social mobility on a global scale and from a historical perspective.

Assembling data on patterns of inequality in more than ninety-six countries, Unveiling Inequality reframes the relationship between globalization and inequality within and between nations. Korzeniewicz and Moran first examine two different historical patterns—“High Inequality Equilibrium” and “Low Inequality Equilibrium”—and question whether increasing equality, democracy, and economic growth are inextricably linked as nations modernize. Inequality is best understood as a complex set of relational interactions that unfold globally over time. So the same institutional mechanisms that have historically reduced inequality within some nations have also often accentuated the selective exclusion of populations from poorer countries and enhanced high inequality equilibrium between nations. National identity and citizenship are the fundamental contemporary bases of stratification and inequality in the world, the authors conclude. Drawing on these insights, the book recasts patterns of mobility within global stratification. The authors detail the three principal paths available for social mobility from a global perspective: within-country mobility, mobility through national economic growth, and mobility through migration.

Korzeniewicz and Moran provide strong evidence that the nation where we are born is the single greatest deter-mining factor of how we will live. Too much sociological literature on inequality focuses on the plight of “have-nots” in wealthy nations who have more opportunity for social mobility than even the average individual in nations perennially at the bottom of the wealth distribution scale. Unveiling Inequality represents a major paradigm shift in thinking about social inequality and a clarion call to reorient discussions of economic justice in world-historical global terms.

ROBERTO PATRICIO KORZENIEWICZ is professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and profesor titular at the Escuela de Política y Gobierno of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina).

TIMOTHY PATRICK MORAN is associate professor of sociology and director of Graduate Studies at State University of New York-Stony Brook

Explores the idea that a "new breed" of men and women are actively involved in the majority American political party, and that their motives, goals, ideals, and patterns of organizational behavior are different from those of the people who have dominated U.S. politics in the past. This book is based on interviews with 1,300 delegates to the 1972 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and mail questionnaires completed by some 55 percent of the delegates. The author identifies women as one part of the new "presidential elite," and analyzes their social, cultural, psychological, and political characteristics. This study was funded jointly by Russell Sage Foundation and The Twentieth Century Fund.

JEANE KIRKPATRICK is Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. She is the author of Political Woman and Leader and Vanguard in Mass Society.