During the past decade, Democrats and Republicans each have received about fifty percent of the votes and controlled about half of the government, but this has not resulted in policy deadlock. Despite highly partisan political posturing, the policy regime has been largely moderate. Incremental, yet substantial, policy innovations such as welfare reform; deficit reduction; the North American Free Trade Agreement; and the deregulation of telecommunications, banking, and agriculture have been accompanied by such continuities as Social Security and Medicare, the maintenance of earlier immigration reforms, and the persistence of many rights-based policies, including federal affirmative action.

In Seeking the Center, twenty-one contributors analyze policy outcomes in light of the frequent alternation in power among evenly divided parties. They show how the triumph of policy moderation and the defeat of more ambitious efforts, such as health care reform, can be explained by mutually supporting economic, intellectual, and political forces. Demonstrating that the determinants of public policy become clear by probing specific issues, rather than in abstract theorizing, they restore the politics of policymaking to the forefront of the political science agenda.

Martin A. Levin is a professor of politics at Brandeis University. He is coauthor of After the Cure: Managing AIDs and Other Public Health Crises (University Press of Kansas, 2000).

Marc Landy is a professor of political science at Boston College. He is coauthor of Presidential Greatness (University Press of Kansas, 2000).

Martin Shapiro is the James W. and Isabel Coffroth Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law. He is the author of Who Guards the Guardians: Judicial Control of Administration (University of Georgia Press, 1988).