Politics of Alcoholism

The Politics of Alcoholism can be read on one level as a fascinating history of the evolving politics of what this country is doing about “the problem of alcoholism.” Not so long ago that problem was scarcely larger than a human hand against the horizon but now it makes good regular newspaper copy. This text follows through on the much-raised question of how a social problem becomes defined as a large scale problem when the same phenomenon x Preface now labeled as “a problem” was not so named before. What is offered here is a direct attack on the rise into public visibility of something previously the concern of a relatively small number of people and groups and which gets defined along the way as a problem for the whole nation. The second issue addressed is closer to the political scientist’s traditional interest namely the politics of handling public issues: research and theorizing here usually focus on interest groups lobbying public debate legislative rights constituencies and so on.