scholarly journals A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOE SOSS ◽  
SANFORD F. SCHRAM
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Mass Opinion ◽  
Quantitative Case Study ◽  
Shed Light

This article analyzes the strategic use of public policy as a tool for reshaping public opinion. In the 1990s, “progressive revisionists” argued that, by reforming welfare, liberals could free the Democratic Party of a significant electoral liability, reduce the race-coding of poverty politics, and produce a public more willing to invest in anti-poverty efforts. Connecting this argument to recent scholarship on policy feedback, we pursue a quantitative case study of the potential for new policies to move public opinion. Our analysis reveals that welfare reform in the 1990s produced few changes in mass opinion. To explain this result, we propose a general framework for the analysis of mass feedback effects. After locating welfare as a “distant-visible” case in this framework, we advance four general propositions that shed light on our case-specific findings as well as the general conditions under which mass feedback effects should be viewed as more or less likely.

scholarly journals Social democratic representation and welfare spending: a quantitative case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-596
Author(s):  
Henning Finseraas
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Quantitative Case Study

AbstractThe welfare state literature argues that Social Democratic party representation is of key importance for welfare state outcomes. However, few papers are able to separate the influence of parties from voter preferences, which implies that the partisan effects will be overstated. I study a natural experiment to identify a partisan effect. In 1995, the Labour Party (Ap) in the Norwegian municipality of Flå filed their candidate list too late and could not participate in the local election. Ap was the largest party in Flå in the entire post-World War period, but have not regained this position. I use the synthetic control method to study the effects on welfare spending priorities. I find small and insignificant partisan effects.

The Politics of Hidden Policy: Feedback Effects and the Charitable Contributions Deduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Kelly L. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Charitable Contributions ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Over Time

Policy feedback, or the process in which policies create constituencies vested in their maintenance, is a durable feature of the American welfare state. Scholars have shown that policy visibility conditions how feedback effects unfold: for public-private policies—arrangements in which the state delegates service provision to private actors, often described as “hidden” or “submerged”—policy feedback typically galvanizes not citizens but market actors that benefit indirectly from these subsidies. This article extends theories of public-private policy feedback from market actors to charitable organizations through a case study of the charitable contributions deduction. The deduction’s incremental expansion is found to have mobilized charities as powerful stakeholders in the policy’s endurance. Charities’ efforts to protect the deduction, together with the efforts of lawmakers, have couched the policy in a politics of neoliberalism and disguised its effects, insulating it from reform even as elites have netted a greater share of its benefits over time.

scholarly journals When and How New Policy Creates New Politics: Examining the Feedback Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Public Opinion

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Jacobs ◽  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
New Politics ◽  
The Affordable Care Act

Following E. E. Schattschneider’s observation that “a new policy creates a new politics,” scholars of “policy feedback” have theorized that policies influence subsequent political behavior and public opinion. Recent studies observe, however, that policy feedback does not always occur and the form it takes varies considerably. To explain such variation, we call for policy feedback studies to draw more thoroughly on public opinion research. We theorize that: (1) feedback effects are not ubiquitous and may in some instances be offset by political factors, such as partisanship and trust in government; (2) policy design may generate self-interested or sociotropic motivations, and (3) feedback effects result not only from policy benefits but also from burdens. We test these expectations by drawing on a unique panel study of Americans’ responses to the Affordable Care Act. We find competing policy and political pathways, which produce variations in policy feedback.

scholarly journals Beyond Positive and Negative: New Perspectives on Feedback Effects in Public Opinion on the Welfare State

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius R Busemeyer ◽  
Aurélien Abrassart ◽  
Roula Nezi
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Dynamic Feedback ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Positive And Negative Feedback ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract The study of policy feedback on public attitudes and policy preferences has become a growing area of research in recent years. Scholars in the tradition of Pierson usually argue that positive, self-reinforcing feedback effects dominate (that is, attitudes are commensurate with existing institutions), whereas the public thermostat model developed by Wlezien and Soroka expects negative, self-undermining feedback. Moving beyond the blunt distinction between positive and negative feedback, this article develops and proposes a more fine-grained typology of feedback effects that distinguishes between accelerating, self-reinforcing and self-undermining, specific and general, as well as long- and short-term dynamic feedback. The authors apply this typology in an analysis of public opinion on government spending in different areas of the welfare state for twenty-one OECD countries, employing a pseudo-panel approach. The empirical analysis confirms the usefulness of this typology since it shows that different types of feedback effects can be observed empirically.

Making What Government Does Apparent to Citizens: Policy Feedback Effects, Their Limitations, and How They Might Be Facilitated

2019 ◽  
Vol 685 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-46
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
The Public

Public policies sometimes generate “policy feedback effects,” reshaping public opinion and political participation among beneficiaries or the public generally, often with the effects of generating supportive constituencies that help to sustain the program. Yet such effects do not always occur; in fact, despite that Americans use more social policies than ever, antipathy to government runs high—evidence of a seeming “government-citizen disconnect.” Policy design and delivery matters for policy feedback, as policies that make government’s role more visible may make more of an impression on beneficiaries; yet political polarization and distrust in government can interfere with such effects. In addition, those who are most aware of the government’s role in social provision often participate least in politics, and vice versa. This article considers strategies that public officials and other civic and political leaders can use to facilitate policy feedback effects.

scholarly journals The political economy of health financing reform in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 732-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Croke ◽  
Mariana Binti Mohd Yusoff ◽  
Zalilah Abdullah ◽  
Ainul Nadziha Mohd Hanafiah ◽  
Khairiah Mokhtaruddin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Health Financing ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Financing System ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
The Status

Abstract There is growing evidence that political economy factors are central to whether or not proposed health financing reforms are adopted, but there is little consensus about which political and institutional factors determine the fate of reform proposals. One set of scholars see the relative strength of interest groups in favour of and opposed to reform as the determining factor. An alternative literature identifies aspects of a country’s political institutions–specifically the number and strength of formal ‘veto gates’ in the political decision-making process—as a key predictor of reform’s prospects. A third group of scholars highlight path dependence and ‘policy feedback’ effects, stressing that the sequence in which health policies are implemented determines the set of feasible reform paths, since successive policy regimes bring into existence patterns of public opinion and interest group mobilization which can lock in the status quo. We examine these theories in the context of Malaysia, a successful health system which has experienced several instances of proposed, but ultimately blocked, health financing reforms. We argue that policy feedback effects on public opinion were the most important factor inhibiting changes to Malaysia’s health financing system. Interest group opposition was a closely related factor; this opposition was particularly powerful because political leaders perceived that it had strong public support. Institutional veto gates, by contrast, played a minimal role in preventing health financing reform in Malaysia. Malaysia’s dramatic early success at achieving near-universal access to public sector healthcare at low cost created public opinion resistant to any change which could threaten the status quo. We conclude by analysing the implications of these dynamics for future attempts at health financing reform in Malaysia.

“No One Wants to Change the System as Much as Those Who Are Trapped by the System”

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-143
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Media System ◽  
System P ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Rightward Movement

This chapter analyzes media content, elite discourse, and public opinion on welfare reform in the mid-1990s. It demonstrates that major television and newspaper coverage of this historic neoliberal policy change significantly favored neoliberal views and downplayed elite and nongovernmental criticism. The chapter also demonstrates dwindling substance in news coverage of neoliberal policies since the early 1980s. Corporate imperatives in the increasingly consolidated media system and rightward movement in the Democratic Party during this historical period are connected to patterns in welfare news. Survey data suggest that media coverage shaped public opinion to support this paradigmatic neoliberal social policy.

Public Opinion

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Y. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Communication Processes

Public opinion warrants increasing attention in research on American political development. It is central to the study of democratic politics, and it is involved with political processes that are sensitive to time and historical context. It can be studied using the methods of social and political historians and increasingly through data from opinion polls. Studies of democracy in action are arguably the most important, focusing on the causal relationship between public opinion and government policymaking, including the institutional processes and mechanisms that link the two. Given that public opinion can have important effects on what leaders, institutions, and governments do, it has become increasingly important to study the influences on both public opinion overall and different segments of it that might be most politically consequential. These influences include especially mass communication processes and also “policy feedback” effects on the public’s behavior broadly.

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