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"Hacker, Jacob S"
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After the “Master Theory”: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis
Drawing on the pioneering work of Anthony Downs, political scientists have tended to characterize American politics as a game among undifferentiated competitors, played out largely through elections, with outcomes reflecting how formal rules translate election results into legislative votes. In this perspective, voters, campaigns, elections, and the ideological distribution of legislators merit extensive scrutiny. Other features of the political environment—most notably, the policies these legislators help create and the interest groups that struggle over these policies—are deemed largely peripheral. However, contemporary politics often looks very different than the world described by Downs. Instead, it more closely resembles the world depicted by E. E. Schattschneider—a world in which policy and groups loom large, the influence of voters is highly conditional, and the key struggle is not over gaining office but over reshaping governance. Over the last twenty years, a growing body of scholarship has emerged that advances this corrective vision—an approach we call “policy-focused political science.” In this framework, politics is centrally about the exercise of government authority for particular substantive purposes. Such exercises of authority create the “terrain” for political struggle, profoundly shaping both individual and group political behavior. More important, because policies can be so consequential, they also serve as the “prize” for many of the most enduring political players, especially organized interest groups. The payoffs of a policy-focused perspective include a more accurate portrayal of the institutional environment of modern politics, an appreciation for the fundamental importance of organized groups, a better understanding of the dynamics of policy change, and a more accurate mapping of interests, strategies, and influence. These benefits are illustrated through brief examinations of two of the biggest changes in American politics over the last generation: asymmetric partisan polarization and the growing concentration of income at the top.
Journal Article
American amnesia : how the war on government led us to forget what made America prosper
In the past, government and business were as much partners as rivals, resulting in broad-based growth and healthy social development. But advocates of anti-government market fundamentalism are intent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. Hacker and Pierson examine why what's good for American business elites and what's good for Americans have become misaligned.
Book
Off Center
The Republicans who run American government today have defied the normal laws of political gravity. They have ruled with the slimmest of majorities and yet have transformed the nation's governing priorities. They have strayed dramatically from the moderate middle of public opinion and yet have faced little public backlash. Again and again, they have sided with the affluent and ideologically extreme while paying little heed to the broad majority of Americans. And much more often than not, they have come out on top. This book shows why-and why this troubling state of affairs can and must be changed.
Written in a highly accessible style by two professional political scientists,Off Centertells the story of a deliberative process restricted and distorted by party chieftains, of unresponsive power brokers subverting the popular will, and of legislation written by and for powerful interests and deliberately designed to mute popular discontent. In the best tradition of engaged social science,Off Centeris a powerful and informed critique that points the way toward a stronger foundation for American democracy.
eBook
The resistance : the dawn of the anti-Trump opposition movement
\"Even before the 2016 presidential election took place, opponents of a Trump presidency took to the streets. The protests intensified after Trump took office. Over time, the Resistance was joined by a broad variety of groups and embraced an increasing diversity of tactics. The Resistance details the emergence of a volatile and diverse movement directed against the Trump presidency\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Insecure Alliances: Risk, Inequality, and Support for the Welfare State
Popular support for the welfare state varies greatly across nations and policy domains. We argue that these variations—vital to understanding the politics of the welfare state—reflect in part the degree to which economic disadvantage (low income) and economic insecurity (high risk) are correlated. When the disadvantaged and insecure are mostly one and the same, the base of popular support for the welfare state is narrow. When the disadvantaged and insecure represent two distinct groups, popular support is broader and opinion less polarized. We test these predictions both across nations within a single policy area (unemployment insurance) and across policy domains within a single polity (the United States, using a new survey). Results are consistent with our predictions and are robust to myriad controls and specifications. When disadvantage and insecurity are more correlated, the welfare state is more contested.
Journal Article
Medicare for More — Why We Still Need a Public Option and How to Get There
Public Option 2.0 may be the most realistic way to guarantee universal coverage with a broad choice of providers and with medical prices held down by the government. If the United States is to achieve this elusive goal, however, advocates need to lay the groundwork now.
Journal Article
Policy Feedback in an Age of Polarization
A large body of research has explored how policies, once enacted, reshape public opinion, governing institutions, and political organizations—a process known as “policy feedback.” Yet this productive research agenda has yet to be translated into practical recommendations of the sort regularly provided by other social science research. This volume of The ANNALS presents the findings of a major collective effort to do just this. The Policy Feedback Project (PFP) is an effort to develop research-backed arguments about how policy feedback might be harnessed to address collective problems in today’s age of partisan polarization and economic inequality. This article orients readers to our collective approach and summarizes some of the contributing authors’ findings. In particular, we show how the feedback effects of policies could be used to (1) tackle long-standing public problems that have resisted effective responses, (2) increase the long-term durability of policy initiatives designed to address these problems, and (3) build political momentum and power to facilitate the adaptation and expansion of these initiatives over time.
Journal Article
The Insecure American: Economic Experiences, Financial Worries, and Policy Attitudes
Even before the sharp downturn that began in 2007, many Americans were concerned about economic risks. Yet this widespread public concern has not been matched by attention from political scientists regarding how citizens experience and understand the economic risks they face or how those experiences and understandings shape their views of public policy. We develop here an argument about the role of personal economic experiences in the formation of policy attitudes that we validate using a distinctive opinion survey of our own design, fielded not long after the onset of the Great Recession. The survey tracks citizens' economic experiences, expectations, and policy attitudes within multiple domains of risk (employment, medical care, family, and wealth arrangements). These investigations show that economic insecurity systematically and substantially affects citizens' attitudes toward government's role. Citizens' economic worries largely track exposure to substantial economic shocks. Citizens' policy attitudes in turn appear highly responsive to economic worries, as well as to the experience of economic shocks—with worries and shocks creating greater support for government policies that buffer the relevant economic risk. Attitudes seem most affected by temporally proximate shocks, shocks befalling households that have weak private safety nets, and shocks occurring within the domain most relevant to the policy in question, though attitudes are also (more weakly) correlated with shocks in other domains. The magnitude of these associations rivals partisanship and ideology and almost always exceeds that for conventional measures of socio-economic status. Given the long-term increase in economic insecurity and current sluggish recovery, understanding how insecurity shapes citizens' policy attitudes and political behavior should be a major concern of political science.
Journal Article
Reducing Risk as well as Inequality: Assessing the Welfare State's Insurance Effects
Leading accounts of the politics of the welfare state focus on societal demands for risk-spreading policies. Yet current measures of the welfare state focus not on risk, but on inequality. To address this gap, this letter describes the development of two new measures, risk incidence and risk reduction, which correspond to the prevalence of large income losses and the degree to which welfare states reduce that prevalence, respectively. Unlike existing indicators, these measures require panel data, which the authors harmonize for twenty-one democracies. The study finds that large losses affect all income and education levels, making the welfare state valuable to a broad cross-section of citizens. It also finds that taxes and transfers greatly reduce the prevalence of such losses, though to varying degrees across countries and over time. Finally, it disaggregates the measures to identify specific ‘triggers’ of large losses, and finds that these triggers are associated with risks on which welfare states focus, such as unemployment and sickness.
Journal Article