Although politicians promise innovation and change when they run for office, once elected they face inherited commitments to programs initiated by their predecessors, legacies that severely limit their freedom of choice. In this trail blazing work, Richard Rose and Phillip L. Davies systematically examine the ways in which decisions made by past generations of administrators control policy-making in the present. Basing their conclusions on a unique study of hundreds of public programs in effect in Britain since the end of World War II, Rose and Davies show that the impact of an...