Social Policy and the Authority of Evidence

The growing call for social policy to be evidence‐based implies that ‘evidence’ possesses an intrinsic authority. Much of the evidence used by governments to formulate or evaluate social policy is signified through statistics and the language of quantification. Evidence presented in this way has the appearance of certainty and a legitimacy that seems beyond challenge. Having an appreciation of the history and sociology of the ‘science of the state’, as statistics was originally defined, helps demystify the authority of social statistics. This enables policy‐makers and program administrators to better discern the policy merit of numerical evidence.     

Beliefs About Corporate America and the Structure of Opinions Toward Privatization

This research analyzes the individual-level factors associated with public support for the private provision of public goods and services. Given that privatization requires the transfer of authority from public to private entities, we argue that beliefs about private companies are an important and overlooked source of heterogeneity in explaining public policy preferences toward privatization. We test this expectation using survey data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that support for privatization is associated with positive beliefs about the motivation of private companies and with favorable views about corporate accountability relative to the accountability of government. Opposition to privatization is associated with beliefs about corporate influence in politics. Preferences for limited government are also associated with support for privatization. These results highlight the potential for beliefs about private companies to serve as a group heuristic in political reasoning and the ability of citizens to make reasoned choices on complex public policy issues.     

The European Union and Greece: Political Acceptability and Financial Transfers

In this paper a conceptual model is developed that relates loyalty to a community of countries to the material benefits derived from it, measured by the transfer of extra income. We argue that the extent of a country's welfare, and consequently its acceptance to participate in a community increase together with the latter's scope for influence on the former. We use the paradigm of Greece, which is one of the main recipient countries in the EU. It was found that financial transfers concerning regional policy affect in the long-run 'the acceptance of European integration' by the public in Greece while social policy funds appear to have short-run positive effects on public opinion.     

Policy beliefs,policy learning,and risk perception: Exploring the formation of local creative Placemaking-catalyzed policy network

This article studies the formation of a local Creative Placemaking (CPM) policy network based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and social capital perspective of policy networks. This article hypothesizes that policy beliefs, policy learning, social capital, and the perceived risks induced by defections, as well as macro-level changes in the broader political and socio-economic system, influence partner selection in the local CPM policy networks. The study collected survey data from policy actors participating in the Franklinton CPM-catalyzed revitalization project in Columbus, Ohio. An exponential random graph model (ERGM) was applied to test the hypotheses. The findings partially support the hypotheses: policy learning, certain secondary policy beliefs, and risk perceptions of changes in economic and political factors are correlated with tie formation. The reciprocity-driven bonding structure underlies the Franklinton CPM policy network, suggesting that policy actors perceive the Franklinton CPM policy network as a high-defection-risk network. This study has implications for policy makers in designing engagement strategies to better involve stakeholders holding different beliefs and occupying different network positions.     

When Mayors Matter: Estimating the Impact of Mayoral Partisanship on City Policy

U.S. cities are limited in their ability to set policy. Can these constraints mute the impact of mayors’ partisanship on policy outcomes? We hypothesize that mayoral partisanship will more strongly affect outcomes in policy areas where there is less shared authority between local, state, and federal governments. To test this hypothesis, we create a novel dataset combining U.S. mayoral election returns from 1990 to 2006 with city fiscal data. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that cities that elect a Democratic mayor spend a smaller share of their budget on public safety, a policy area where local discretion is high, than otherwise similar cities that elect a Republican or an Independent. We find no differences on tax policy, social policy, and other areas that are characterized by significant overlapping authority. These results suggest that models of national policymaking are only partially applicable to U.S. cities. They also have implications for political accountability: mayors may not be able to influence the full range of policies that are nominally local responsibilities.     

States on Steroids: The Intergovernmental Odyssey of American Climate Policy

Climate change has conventionally been framed as an issue that would be addressed by an international regime established through negotiation among nation‐states. The experience of policy development in the decade following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol indicates that climate change also needs to be examined as a challenge of multilevel governance. The increasingly central role of state governments in American climate policy formation squares with recent experience in other Western democracies that share authority across governmental levels. This paper examines the American experience, considering factors that have contributed to a state‐centric policy process and using that body of experience to assess competing strategic choices faced by individual states based on their mix of emission trends and policy adoption rates. In turn, the collective state experience allows for consideration of the varied political feasibility of competing climate policy tools that remain under active review in subnational, national, and international contexts. The paper concludes with a set of scenarios that explore different ways in which a state‐centric system may be integrated with expanding involvement at the national level.     

A Cognitive Perspective on Policy Implementation: Reform Beliefs,Sensemaking, and Social Networks

Utilizing a cognitive perspective, this article examines the social processes through which teachers come to understand the Common Core State Standards. The authors begin by identifying three beliefs that have important implications for policy implementation: self‐efficacy, resource adequacy, and value for clients. They measure those beliefs and the Common Core discussion networks that emerge among teachers at three points in time. Through the use of SIENA models, the authors explore how networks and beliefs coevolve within schools. Unlike prior research on social networks, which consistently finds strong homophilous tendencies, this research finds no evidence that teachers seek out coworkers who hold similar beliefs. Rather, teachers relied on preexisting formal and informal relationships to guide interactions. Those interactions were characterized by social influence, whereby a teacher's own beliefs adapted toward the beliefs held by the members of their social network. The findings offer a novel perspective on the complex dynamic that occurs within organizations as new policies are unveiled and employees interact with one another to understand the changes those policies entail.     

Candidates' policy platforms and election outcomes: The three faces of policy representation

Abstract.   Recent empirical studies by Alvarez and Nagler, Erikson and Romero, and others conclude that candidates' and parties' policy platforms only modestly affect their electoral support. This suggests that candidates/parties can win elections even when their policies differ sharply from the policy beliefs of the constituencies that elect them. This raises the question: How can voters exercise control over government policies via elections? We report applications to American and French presidential election data that suggest three paradoxical conclusions. On the one hand, we find that presidential candidates can moderate their policies with at most a modest change in vote share, but if they move by the same amount to a more extreme position, they face severe vote losses that could cripple their election prospects. Alternatively, movement by both candidates in the same direction or a policy shift by the voters may have a major effect on the outcome.     

Constituents’ Responses to Congressional Roll‐Call Voting

Do citizens hold their representatives accountable for policy decisions, as commonly assumed in theories of legislative politics? Previous research has failed to yield clear evidence on this question for two reasons: measurement error arising from noncomparable indicators of legislators’ and constituents’ preferences and potential simultaneity between constituents’ beliefs about and approval of their representatives. Two new national surveys address the measurement problem directly by asking respondents how they would vote and how they think their representatives voted on key roll‐call votes. Using the actual votes, we can, in turn, construct instrumental variables that correct for simultaneity. We find that the American electorate responds strongly to substantive representation. (1) Nearly all respondents have preferences over important bills before Congress. (2) Most constituents hold beliefs about their legislators’ roll‐call votes that reflect both the legislators’ actual behavior and the parties’ policy reputations. (3) Constituents use those beliefs to hold their legislators accountable.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

The Social Psychology of Policy Analysis

This article illustrates how some of the core concepts of social psychology can increase understanding of the practice of policy analysis. Policy analysis is shown to be a form of rhetoric subject to social psychological principles of attitude change. The article argues that policy analysts are primarily concerned with changing policymakers' beliefs about the consequences of alternative policies, but that preferences for alternative policies are largely the result of values. Values are formed and modified primarily by social comparison processes, conformity pressures, and the dynamics of group decision making rather than by rational argument. As a result, policy analysts could become more effective by addressing issues of values in their analyses or by mediating the social processes that might interfere with good policy choices.     

The Place of Human Rights in American Efforts to Expand and Universalize Healthcare

This article explores the very limited cases historically in the twentieth century when human rights was used in American policy debate as a defending principle for the provision of government-guaranteed universal healthcare. It discusses these cases and examines various reasons as to why this is so, noting the major emphasis in American political culture on negative rather than positive liberty. It examines the shift in political culture from the Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson eras that embraced social and economic rights and defined them as such to the post-Reagan era when conservative ideologies were ascendant. These ideologies reject the legitimacy of social and economic rights and remain dominant in the United States. It comparatively situates the American refusal to consider universal healthcare a human right with European affirmations of such a right and to those found in various treaties of international law. Finally, it analyzes how Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—while not adopting the rhetoric of human rights does, functionally, enable as a matter of public policy an entitlement to healthcare.     

The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century

One of the most important developments affecting electoral competition in the United States has been the increasingly partisan behavior of the American electorate. Yet more voters than ever claim to be independents. We argue that the explanation for these seemingly contradictory trends is the rise of negative partisanship. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we show that as partisan identities have become more closely aligned with social, cultural and ideological divisions in American society, party supporters including leaning independents have developed increasingly negative feelings about the opposing party and its candidates. This has led to dramatic increases in party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, a steep decline in the advantage of incumbency and growing consistency between the results of presidential elections and the results of House, Senate and even state legislative elections. The rise of negative partisanship has had profound consequences for electoral competition, democratic representation and governance.     

Toward Cultural Analysis in Policy Analysis: Picking Up Where Aaron Wildavsky Left Off

To generate policy alternatives and offer policy advice, the policy analysis and planning literature counsels analysts to assess the values and beliefs of policy actors, as well as the organizational and political contexts in which an analyst's proposed solution will have to be enacted and implemented, but does not further specify what these values, beliefs, and contexts might be. Analysts can anticipate the kinds of political values and the kinds of beliefs about human nature, the environment, and the economy that are likely to be associated with different forms of social organization by relying on Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky's theory of culture. Additionally, this form of cultural analysis will allow analysts to deduce which policy problems are most likely to arise, which policy solutions are most likely to be feasible, and which policy advocacy coalitions are most probable in different cultural contexts.     

Franz Boas: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual

Franz Boas is among the most important public intellectuals in American history because the authority of his expertise was joined with the purposes to which he applied his citizenship. His contributions to the discipline of anthropology were as towering as anyone has ever made; he also tapped his scholarly credentials to fight for good causes, such as civil rights and civil liberties. His origins as a Jewish immigrant and his political ideals as a cosmopolitan liberal predisposed him to reject the racialism that dominated late-nineteenth-century thought, and to advance an alternative social science that would be unpolluted by condescension towards lesser breeds. So persuasive was his research that a paradigm shift occurred; and buttressed with the authority of scholarship, Boas was decisive in changing public discourse on the often radioactive subject of race. He honored the ideal of the scholar as activist and as social conscience, and virtually no one in modern American history came closer to satisfying that standard.     

The value of discourse analysis as a methodological tool for understanding a land reform program

The negotiation and contestation of social value, authority and knowledge is intrinsic to development interventions. Discourse analysis is growing in popularity as one of the tools through which this contestation and negotiation can be explored. This paper explores the policy issues illuminated by a discourse analysis of the Land Reform Pilot Project in the KwaZulu Natal province of South Africa. Specifically, it is argued that discourse analysis highlights human agency and ideological practices and in so doing reveals the construction and contestation of social value, authority and knowledge.     

INDIVIDUALISM, COLLECTIVISM AND THE MARKETIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY: Chile and China Compared

Ideological beliefs are of central importance in current debates about the marketization of social security. However, developments in Chile and China suggest that the conventional individualist‐collectivist dichotomy, which has framed ideological debates on social security, fails to capture the complexities of ideological differences as well as the imperative of economic development which appears to be driving social security policy in both countries. Examining events in these countries, it is suggested that the individualist‐collectivist dichotomy needs to be reconsidered. It is also argued at a normative level that these ideologies no longer provide a viable basis for social security policy, and that the “developmentalist” approach emerging in China merits further scrutiny.     

Social conflict over property rights: the end,a new beginning,or a continuing debate?

The ownership and control of private land is a core social value in the United States. Public planning can be seen as conflicting with this value. The long-standing tension between private property rights and public planning was heightened in the 1990s with the emergence of the so-called private property rights movement. This movement seeks to limit governmental authority over privately owned land through a multi-level strategy of legal, policy, political, and public relations actions. This paper explores the historical basis for this conflict, the legal framework within which it functions, and contemporary policy battles.

The paper concludes that there may be no final outcome to this debate. Property rights activists are impassioned and believe their view of history and law is correct. I argue that it may be best to see debate about land use and property rights as one of the central vehicles for a continual reframing of core values in the American experience.     

PARADIGMS, POLICIES, AND PEOPLE: EXPLORING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN NORMATIVE BELIEFS, PUBLIC POLICIES AND UTILITY CONSUMER PAYMENT PROBLEMS

This article takes a step toward unifying normative and empirical policy analysis by examining the convergence of societal metatheories, public policy models, and empirical data on consumers. It begins with the premise that policies rest on a foundation of normative beliefs or metatheories that, in turn, put boundaries around the possible and give social meaning to the policies and programs that flow from them. The interaction of social metatheories about poverty and existing policies to deal with people with utility payment problems is examined. The article continues with the idea that good policy arguments are supported with empirical data and factual evidence. An empirical cluster analysis of a representative sample of consumers provides a basis for identifying the extent to which the empirical clusters conform to any or all of the metatheory‐policy linkages. The ultimate message is that theory and practice ought to demarcate where they are deductively metaphysical, based on beliefs about a subject, where they are inductively empirical, based on objective measurements relevant to the situation to which applied, and where a mixed approach is used. Linkage of the three types of information allows policy research to identify options in light of the values and metatheories on which they are based and the objective characteristics and effects on their objects of action. The implications are that when policies are based on beliefs that reflect only a part of empirical reality, implementation may fail or be inefficient and ineffective.     

Political Sophistication and Policy Reasoning: A Reconsideration

The sophistication-interaction theory of mass policy reasoning, which posits that the strength of the relationship between abstract principles and policy preferences is conditional on political sophistication, dominates the study of public opinion. This article argues that the sophistication-interaction theory does not hold to the degree the consensus claims. Specifically, it challenges the proposition that sophistication promotes the use of domain-specific beliefs and values. Analysis of 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1990 NES data yields two compelling findings. First, a series of confirmatory factor analyses indicate that beliefs about equal opportunity, self-reliance, and limited government in the social welfare domain and about militarism and anticommunism in the foreign policy domain are structured coherently and equivalently in the minds of citizens at different levels of sophistication. Second, structural equation model results demonstrate that political sophistication does not systematically enhance the impact these principles have on policy preferences .