The Political Power of Bad Ideas by Mark Lawrence Schrad

In The Political Power of Bad Ideas, Mark Schrad uses one of the greatest oddities of modern history–the broad diffusion throughout the Western world of alcohol-control legislation in the early twentieth century–to make a powerful argument about how bad policy ideas achieve international success. His could an idea that was widely recognized by experts as bad before adoption, and which ultimately failed everywhere, come to be adopted throughout the world? To answer the question, Schrad utilizes an institutionalist approach and focuses in particular on the United States, Sweden, and Russia/the USSR.