Leituras sobre problemas de como se faz política

A primeira referência diz respeito a algumas disfuncionalidades no modo como se faz política nos EUA,  mas algumas das coisas apontadas, verificam-se em todo o lado - por outro lado, aquilo que se diz , no resto não transcrito, sobre como os técnicos e os cientistas podem influenciar a opinião dos políticos tem aderência à realidade. A segunda refere um conceito a que me tinha referido já aqui, mas a que volto, para  transcrever a nota da Wikipédia sobre ele.  

• The Oil Drum | A Politician's View of Policy Making: "Jeffrey Sachs, economic advisor to the UN, in his recently published article, Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process , articulates four manifestations of the breakdown in Washington: 1. Inability to focus beyond the next election 2. Decisions are made through negotiations with those who will be funding the next election (i.e. industry lobbyists) 3. Technical expertise is ignored or bypassed 4. The public is largely excluded from the process Sachs asks, “How can business and government work together without policies falling prey to special interests?” He suggests that government initiate a more “open, transparent and systematic public-private policy process in each major area of sustainable development”—high-level roundtable proceedings that are open to the public, web-based, and include representatives from private business, nongovernmental organizations, government officials, scientists, and engineers. While this all sounds good in theory, my eight years in public office tells me that one more group, no matter how it is constituted, issuing one more report, is not going to drive better public policy."

• Overton window - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after its originator, Joe Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It describes a 'window' in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. [...] Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous 'outer fringe' ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as: * Unthinkable * Radical * Acceptable * Sensible * Popular * Policy The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it, and adding new ideas that can push the old ideas towards acceptance merely by making the limits more extreme."