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The Politics of Rapid Legal Change: Immigration Policy in the 1980s

Conventional wisdom maintains that the enduring structures of American politics make rapid policy change unlikely. This proposition is confirmed by much political science. Our institutions are designed to bridle and domesticate reform impulses, dissipating the constant pressures for new political and social arrangements. The separation of powers establishes numerous veto points, making initiatives of any kind difficult. The political culture's firm commitment to broad participation and due process places a much higher value on consultation than on decisiveness or direction. Special interests tolerate only incremental changes. The major parties clothe themselves in the familiar as they move toward the political center and its embrace of the status quo. New ideas are of only marginal importance; their transformative power is routinely blunted by one of America's oldest ideas, pragmatism. Stability, not innovation, is the master theme of our politics.