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Welfare Reform As Policy Feedback Author(S): Joe Soss and Sanford F A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback Author(s): Joe Soss and Sanford F. Schram Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Feb., 2007), pp. 111-127 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27644429 Accessed: 23-08-2016 20:04 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27644429?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press, American Political Science Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Political Science Review This content downloaded from 129.105.107.192 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 20:04:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms American Political Science Review Vol. 101, No. 1 February 2007 DOI: 10.1017.S0003055407070049 A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback JOE SOSS University of Wisconsin?Madison SANFORD F. SCHR?M Bryn Mawr College rhis 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. An oldsaw in political science, often attributed to have focused on either elites and organized interests E. E. Schattschneider (1935), holds that "new (Hacker 2002) or the proximate targets of public poli policies create a new politics." It is an insight cies (Campbell 2003; Mettler 2005). In this article, we lost on few successful politicians. Like good chess play address the use of policy design as a conscious political ers, lawmakers must often "think two moves ahead" strategy and extend the study of feedback to elite ef when designing policy. As they gauge how a new policy forts to alter the preferences, beliefs, and behaviors of will affect relevant social problems, strategic politicians broad mass publics. also consider its potential to mobilize or mollify the In the 1990s, an influential group of political ac opposition, create pressures for further action, appease tors argued that, by reforming welfare and making aid or outrage the party faithful, redistribute political recipients "play by the rules," the Democratic Party resources, change the terms of political debate, and so could shed an electoral liability, free poverty politics on. In the iterative game of politics, it pays to design from the crippling effects of racial resentment, and policies in ways that yield advantages in the next create a public opinion environment more favorable round. As a result, policies must be analyzed, not only to anti-poverty efforts (DeParle and Holmes 2000). as efforts to achieve expressed social and economic For advocates of liberal moderation at the centrist goals but also as forms of political action designed to Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), these argu enhance particular actors' abilities to achieve long ments reflected a long-term strategy to reposition the term political goals. In this article, we analyze welfare Democratic Party as well as a short-term strategy to reform as a political strategy designed to move public reassure liberals who felt uneasy about restricting aid to opinion in directions more conducive to liberal political the poor (Weaver 2000). The arguments, however, also goals. Specifically, we ask whether "ending welfare as had a close affinity with scholarship contending that we knew it" made the public more willing to help the policy designs could cultivate public support for social poor and support the Democratic Party, and we use welfare efforts by following a "formula for success" this case to theorize the conditions under which policy (Skocpol 2000) that could navigate the "helping co change can produce "mass feedback" in public opinion. nundrums" posed by majority values (Ellwood 1988). The idea that "new policies create a new politics" has Thus, our analysis seeks to bridge these two worlds by drawn renewed attention in recent years, as students shedding light on policy feedback in mass publics as of policy feedback have sought to show more precisely a practical political strategy and as a topic of political how specific types of policies set particular political science theorizing. The practical stakes in this analysis forces in motion (Pierson 1993; Skocpol 1992). In most begin with the success or failure of the particular strat of the empirical literature on this topic, the political egy that underlay this effort to build public support for effects examined have been largely unintended and liberal anti-poverty goals. At stake in this analysis more broadly, however, are the questions of how and when we should expect governing elites to be capable of using Joe Soss is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of policy actions to reshape beliefs and preferences in the Wisconsin?Madison, 110 North Hall, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706 ([email protected]). citizenry. Sanford F. Schr?m is Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College, 300 Airdale Road, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-1697 ([email protected]). THE PROMISE OF MASS FEEDBACK For helpful comments and advice on earlier versions of this ma EFFECTS terial, we thank Fred Block, Maria Cancian, David Canon, John Coleman, Scott Gehlbach, Jacob Hacker, Eric MacGilvray, Suzanne For political liberals in the United States, the 1980s Mettler, Erin O'Brien, Frances Fox Piven, Gina Sapiro, Lee Sigelman, Kathy Cramer Walsh, David Weimer, participants at the were hard times. The decades following the 1960s were conference, Making the Politics of Poverty and Inequality, and the marked by declining public support for the Democratic anonymous reviewers of our manuscript. Party and for policies to help the disadvantaged. The 111 This content downloaded from 129.105.107.192 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 20:04:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Public Transformed? February 2007 Republican Party controlled the White House and was its emphasis on the poor and nonwhite toward a more winning key votes from traditional Democratic identi politically sustainable universal program." fiers in the white working-class and the South (Teixeira The clock, of course, could not be turned back. But and Rogers 2000). Efforts to cut back social supports progressive revisionists suggested that these political were gaining steam, and anti-welfare rhetoric seemed legacies might be reversed if Democrats used policy to resonate with the public (Block et al. 1987). Among proposals to signal renewed commitments to personal liberals, these developments gave rise to intense self responsibility and the white working class. In a widely reflection and, eventually, a reformist perspective that discussed 1986 article and 1992 book, Mickey Kaus suc Harold Meyerson (1996) dubbed "progressive revi cinctly expressed a view that was gathering momentum sionism." among "New Democrats." Progressive revisionists argued that "Democratic doctrine went off track during the Johnson years [of the If voters are faced with a Democrat who wants to 1960s]," turning toward divisive policies that favored spend money to end welfare, they will open up their the very-poor and racial minorities over the working wallets?both for ending welfare and for other govern class, white mainstream (Meyerson 1996). The new ment projects_To regain the taxpayers' confidence ... Democrats must be ruthless in drawing the work/nonwork policies transformed the political landscape, generating distinction_ Declaring that government benefit pro a public backlash against taxes and programs for the grams ... will only help working families or those who disadvantaged and creating a set of wedge issues re can't work... neatly solves the political dilemma [Thomas] lated to crime, welfare, and race that Republicans were Edsall and others say the Democrats face: how to help the using to win over decisive votes. Policy commitments poor without seeming to underwrite the underclass. (Kaus symbolizing cultural and racial liberalism were now 1992,177-78) costing the Democrats at the polls and undercutting their more populist (and popular) economic agendas Meyerson (1996) argues that variants of this the (Edsall with Edsall 1991). sis gained influence rapidly in the early 1990s and, by A variety of prominent policy scholars made argu the time of the 1992 presidential campaign, candidate ments that resonated with the progressive revision Clinton "was well on his way to mastering the progres ist thesis. Well-known liberal social scientists argued sive revisionist two-step." As Weaver (2000) recounts, that targeted social policies had "veered off course" Clinton's pledge to "end welfare as we know it" did (Skocpol 2000), become mired in "helping conun not reflect a detailed set of policy plans in 1992.
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