A decade's explosive growth in the scope, funding and complexity of national social policy has created serious problems in the United States. This first overview report notes that the Office of Economic Opportunity (now known as the Community Services Administration) has ceased to provide a focal point for national social policy. It was this state…

By the early 1970's, political and scholarly tides had shifted away from the confidence and optimism of the 1960's. The initial broad consensus on the nation's problems and their solutions declined. An evolution is apparent in the attitudes and pronouncements by popular scholars on the role of federal government and its capacity to bring about…