Watching the Race: Where You Sit Affects What You See

States do seem to compete in making welfare policy. This competition,however, does not drive states inexorably toward a race to thebottom. Instead, this competition is a political rivalry ofthe kind that leads to unpredictable and unstable outcomes.This rivalry entails interstate learning and results in adaptation,but it stems from its political utility in appealing to votersand gaining personal recognition in the political arena     

You Can't Fix What You Don't Measure: How ALICE Can Help Rebuild the Middle Class

Seventy percent of Americans identify as middle class, but one in three middle‐income households do not earn enough to support their family at the most basic level, and four in five do not earn enough to afford a sustainable budget. This incongruity explains the increasing frustration of many workers. Yet official government measures do not capture this reality, and as a result, policy makers continue to create economic policies that perpetuate the structural mismatch between wages and costs. This Viewpoint essay addresses these shortcomings. After reviewing alternatives to the federal poverty level, it argues that the most realistic and accurate floor to the middle class is the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) Household Survival Budget. The essay then turns to policies that help realign wages and cost of living and presents initiatives that are being implemented in states across the country. Four policy areas would enable more workers to support their families and fulfill the promise of being middle class in America: meaningful work with stable and sufficient wages, upskilling and digital retooling, fiscal cushion for periods of financial instability, and affordable credit.     

Be Careful How You Frame the Issues

Immigration is related to widening inequality and insecurity in the United States, but it is not the main cause of such changes and to focus on the host/immigrant conflict diverts attention from many different elite projects that have widened inequality. Moral arguments about immigration cannot just address outsiders who only want to get into nations, but must address the moral situation of people in the process of entry and especially of insider/outsiders, people already in. Over the long run, civic nationalism is a healthier model than exclusionary biological or cultural fundamentalist definitions of the national community.

You Get What You Pay For: Environmental Policy and Public Health

In this article, we examine the cumulative impact of state environmentalprotection policies and environmental quality on the healthof state residents in the United States. Using a series of pathanalytic models, we simultaneously analyze the effect of stateenvironmental policies on environmental pollution and healthoutcomes. Our results indicate that states with stronger environmentalprograms have lower levels of pollution and better public health.These results are robust across multiple measures and alternativemodel specifications. We also find some evidence that statesthat assume authority to implement federal environmental programshave worse health outcomes. Our findings suggest that overalllevels of public health may be affected by state choices withrespect to environmental policies and highlight the importanceof assessing programmatic consequences across policy areas.     

You Say You Want a Revolution: the Arab Spring,Norm Diffusion,and the Human Rights Regime

We discuss how the Arab Spring is a reflection of the resiliency of the human rights regime. In order to accomplish this, we explore the extent to which the Arab Spring represents norm diffusion among Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states. Specifically, we examine the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain and consider how economic and demographic changes created space for human rights discourse in these countries. We find that, in the case of MENA states, the Arab Spring represents significant pressure from below. Access to new forms of social media allowed civil society to organize, publicize, and protest relatively efficiently. Social media expanded the potential role of individuals and created newly empowered latent human rights activists who emerged as leaders of the norm diffusion process. The resulting diffusion of human rights norms in the Arab region represents one of the most significant expansions of the human rights regime since the regime’s inception.     

Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Split Bond Rating in States

Bond ratings on state-issued debt provide a signal to credit markets that help them charge an appropriate interest rate, based on the risk of payment default. Though actual default may occur only in extreme circumstances, observed differences in ratings and interest costs across states and time demonstrate that a sound economy, strong financials, and stable policies matter. When data on the factors that presumably affect ratings is public and easily accessible, making sense of differences of opinion between bond rating agencies is difficult. We suggest that such differences—observed as so-called split bond ratings—are often ephemeral. Utilizing a simulation method to uncover the latent credit risk presented by each state, we show that split ratings on state bonds are often due to the fact that presumed category overlap between rating agencies is absent when evaluated on a common latent scale. Most observed state bond rating splits from 1997 through 2006 can be explained by this category mismatch. Our approach has broad implications for pricing state debt, as well as pricing rated debt in other capital market sectors.     

To Know You is Not Necessarily to Love You: The Partisan Mediators of Intergroup Contact

We propose the contact–cue interaction approach to studying political contact—that cues from trusted political elites can moderate the effect of contact on the formation of public policy opinions. Allport’s initial formulation of the contact effect noted that it relies on authority support. In a highly polarized political era, authoritative voices for individuals vary based on party identification. Social experiences may affect public policy, but they must also be considered in light of partisan filters. Using data from the 2006 CCES, we examine the manner in which straight respondents with gay family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances view same-sex marriage policy, finding a strong contact effect among Democrats, but no contact effect among the strongest Republican identifiers. Our data and analyses strongly support the perspective that social interactions (and their effect on policy) are understood through the lens of partisanship and elite cues.