ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of executive leaders and coalitions within policy subsystems in shaping major shifts in national economic policy in the United States and Britain. Executive leaders and coalitions in a subsystem are united by a shared set of core policy beliefs. Once a coalition successfully translates its beliefs into policy outcomes, a hegemonic policy paradigm may be established within the broader policy process. Timing is an important component of paradigm change, as the institution of new policy ideas will need to undergo a full policy cycle, which normally consists of formulation, implementation, and reformulation to allow the “enlightenment function” of policy research and experience to blossom. A decade or more is usually sufficient to test the usefulness of its causal assumptions and supply us with “a reasonably accurate portrait of program success and failure.”1
