Contents -- About the Authors -- Part I. Introduction -- Chapter 1. The New Politics of Inequality: A Policy-Centered Perspective / Jacob S. Hacker, Suzanne Mettler, and Joe Soss -- Part II. Policies and Institutions in the New Politics of Inequality -- Chapter 2. Constricting the Welfare State: Tax Policy and the Political Movement Against Government / Kimberly J. Morgan -- Chapter 3. Entrepreneurial Litigation: Advocacy Coalitions and Strategies in the Fragmented American Welfare State / R. Shep Melnick -- Part III. Elite Efforts to Reshape the Political Landscape
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Over the past four decades, criminal justice in the United States has taken a sharp disciplinary turn. Muscular new policies and stronger efforts to root out and punish violations have pulled an ever-larger number of citizens into an expanding apparatus of state surveillance, custody, and control. The result, a growing body of research suggests, has been a transformation of American society that is far-reaching and unlikely to fade any time soon. Few scholars today dispute the political nature of these developments. The rise of the carceral state is commonly explained, for example, as a political response to new social and economic insecurities and as a product of political party competition. In this instance, as in many others, however, politics tends to fade from view when scholars turn their attention from policy origins to policy effects. Social scientists have generated abundant evidence that the carceral state has had devastating social and economic effects on disadvantaged communities. Yet they have rarely stopped to ask how mass incarceration and a sprawling system of policing and correctional control are reshaping civic life and democracy in the United States. The articles assembled in this volume provide a sorely needed corrective. What they reveal is a policy regime that dramatically amplifies political inequalities and creates forms of political marginalization so deep that they are hard to square with any reasonable conception of democratic citizenship. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]
It's going to take more than smart ideas and good will to combat poverty; smarter policies and a political battle are necessary to disrupt politics as usual.
The landmark welfare legislation of 1996 offers students of politics a unique opportunity to pinpoint the determinants of state-level policy choices -- a case in which the fifty states responded virtually simultaneously to a single policy mandate. Taking advantage of this opportunity, we investigate the factors that led states to make restrictive policy choices after 1996 & use this analysis to evaluate general theories of welfare politics. Specifically, we test six types of explanations for why some states responded by adopting "get-tough" program rules: theories that identify welfare policy as a site of ideological conflict, as an outcome of electoral politics, as a domain of policy innovation, as an instrument of social control, as an outlet for racial resentments, & as an expression of moral values. The results of our ordered & binary logit models suggest that state policies have been shaped by a variety of social & political forces, but especially by the racial composition of families who rely on program benefits. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 89 References. Adapted from the source document.
This article explores the links between welfare participation and broader forms of political involvement. Adopting a political learning perspective, I present evidence that policy designs structure clients' program experiences in ways that teach alternative lessons about the nature of government. Through their experiences under a given policy design, welfare clients develop program-specific beliefs about the wisdom and efficacy of asserting themselves. Because clients interpret their experiences with welfare bureaucracies as evidence of how government works more generally, beliefs about the welfare agency and client involvement become the basis for broader political orientations. I conclude that the views of government that citizens develop through program participation help explain broader patterns of political action and quiescence.
Based on interviews with clients in two welfare programs, this article explores three questions regarding application encounters: (a) What criteria do applicants use to evaluate the treatment they receive? (b) How do application experiences affect individuals' expectations of the status that they will occupy as clients? and (c) How do program designs influence these evaluations and expectations? The analysis sheds new light on a longstanding tension between observation research, which suggests that clients are subordinated in welfare encounters, and survey research, which suggests that clients are satisfied with the treatment they receive. The program comparison also offers a basis for reflecting on recent critiques of the dual U.S. welfare system.
