Alex Waddan
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 256712 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Alex Waddan |
| PRENOMES | Alex |
| SOBRENOME | Waddan |
| ASSINATURA | WADDAN A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Leicester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0104-2451 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 45 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 208 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Historical Institutionalism and Transnational Influence
The Great Depression was a turning point in the development of social programming in North America. This paper explores the politics of social policy expansion during the Great Depression in the United States and Canada through an analytical lens that combines the insights of historical institutionalism and the analysis of transnational processes. Thus, the paper focuses on the differences between these two cases as distinct entities as well as h…
Assessing policy transfer from the United States to the British National Health Service
Much has been written about the claim that the British National Health Service (NHS) is becoming more like the US health care system, something a number of commentators view as a form of "Americanization".Yet, that term is imprecise and unhelpful for rigorous analysis of what has, and has not, happened.This paper uses the lens of policy transfer to explore this issue, which provides a sharper insight into policy development.The paper examines the…
Apg Roundtable
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Social Policy Responses to Rising Inflation in Canada and the United States
Social policies’ responsiveness to rising inflation depends in large part on whether they contain automatic indexation mechanisms, which ensure that the real value of wages and benefits expands during inflationary periods. Here we compare how the indexation of Canadian and U.S. policies on pensions, minimum wages, and food security have affected their responsiveness to the recent cost-of-living crisis. Three main conclusions emerge from our analy…
Federalism and Policy Design in Two Liberal Welfare State Regimes
This paper explores the relationship between federalism and the policy design of labour market policies in two liberal welfare state regimes – Canada and the United States – addressing the following research question: How do variations in policy design intersect with federalism in both countries and how can these variations provide powerful, self-reinforcing or self-undermining feedback effects over time? Combining the literatures on the varietie…
US Republicans and the New Fusionism
US Republicanism and conservatism were structured around ‘fusionism’ from the 1950s onwards. Disparate ideas and interests were ‘fused’ in a broad coalitional bloc that was based upon a commitment to free markets, moral or cultural traditionalism and a commitment to US national security, as well as global power projection. There have, however, been significant shifts in recent years as many Republicans have turned against the larger corporations …
Covid-19, poverty reduction, and partisanship in Canada and the United States
Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, polic…
Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ reform at 40
Focusing on policy feedback, this article examines the influence, four decades after its enactment, of Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 ‘Right to Buy’ (RtB) policy on today’s social housing institutions in the UK. We argue that through interest-group feedback mechanisms, RtB helped expand and reinforce the UK landlord class. Furthermore, we assert that the policy pressures placed on local councils to embody housing within the welfare state contributed to…
Social policy responses to Covid ‐19 in Canada and the United States
Canada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare‐state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian govern…
Explaining Intergovernmental Conflict in the Covid-19 Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. than in Australia and Canada. This article considers three variables for this cross-national divergence: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; vertical party integration; and strength of intergovernmental arrangements. We find that the U.S. presidential system, contrary to parliamentarism in Canada and Australia, provided an opportunity for a populi…
Obama v. Trump
Examines how Trump’s election as President signals a rollback of the Obama years Establishes what can be regarded as Obama's legacy, in both domestic and foreign policy Investigates how far the Trump administration (up to the end of 2019) undoes Obama's legacy Focuses on meaningful shifts in presidential priorities, policy changes, and the imprint of presidential leadership Case studies on specific policy areas where presidential ‘undoing’ has ha…
Stuck in neutral? Federalism, policy instruments, and counter-cyclical responses to Covid-19 in the United States
Federalism plays a foundational role in structuring public expectations about how the United States will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as both an unprecedented public-health crisis and an economic recession. As in prior crises, state governments are expected to be primary sites of governing authority, especially when it comes to immediate public-health needs, while it is assumed that the federal government will supply critical counter-cyclica…
Designing policy resilience
Trumpism, Conservatism and Social Policy
Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act
There is a large body of literature devoted to how “policies create politics” and how feedback effects from existing policy legacies shape potential reforms in a particular area. Although much of this literature focuses on self‐reinforcing feedback effects that increase support for existing policies over time, Kent Weaver and his colleagues have recently drawn our attention to self‐undermining effects that can gradually weaken support for such po…
Unidentical twins
There is a vast social policy literature on how Canada and the United States share key characteristics associated with the liberal welfare regime such as significant reliance on both social assistance and tax-subsidized private benefits and services. Yet, a closer look at these two countries points to key differences in areas such as fiscal federalism, health care, old-age pensions, and family benefits. This special issue of the Journal of Compar…
President Obama, poverty, and the scope and limits of social policy change
There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and ask…
Is Health Care in England Really on the Road to Privatization
In 2010 the Conservative led Coalition government promptly set about reform of the English NHS. Opponents denounced the resulting legislation, the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, as hastening the beloved NHS towards privatization. This was now a familiar refrain as a number of reforms from the late 1980s onwards had provoked the same critique. This paper asks whether the HSC, building on those previous reforms, did finally set health care arr…
Obamacare in the Trump Era
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is the most significant US social policy reform in half a century, and the most politically fractious. Since the law was signed by President Obama, Republicans have mobilised against it, using courts and state governments to undermine the implementation of the legislation, which was set to unfold gradually over a nine‐year period. As we describe in this article, however, t…
Why Are There No Universal Social Programs in the United States?
Much has been written about “American exceptionalism” in social policy, but one aspect has received relatively little attention thus far: the absence of universal public social programs where entitlements to benefits and services are derived from citizenship or residency. This absence is especially striking because other liberal welfare regimes such as Canada and the United Kingdom have long developed such programs. Focusing on policy design and …
Paths to (de)centralization
Drawing on the existing welfare state literature, this article offers a comparative analytical framework to account for the territorial dynamics of social policy in the United States and the People’s Republic of China, two countries that are most dissimilar in terms of political regime but that may exhibit similar territorial patterns of social policy fragmentation. A promising way to explore such patterns, we argue, is to analyze how changes in …
Obamacare and the Politics of Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States
In the USA, universal coverage has long been a key objective of liberal reformers. Yet, despite the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) in 2010, the USA is not set to provide health care coverage to all, even if and when that reform is fully implemented. This article explores this issue by asking the following question: Why was a clear commitment to universal coverage, the norm in ot…
Reassessing Policy Drift
As formulated by Jacob Hacker, the concept of policy drift turned institutional theories of public policy on their heads by suggesting that consequential policy changes often happen in the absence of reform. Especially prevalent in times of political gridlock or stasis, policy drift is a useful concept for capturing how inaction can gradually diminish the effectiveness of social programmes over time. By highlighting cases of difficult‐to‐see poli…
Breaking down ideas and institutions
As the existing comparative policy literature suggests, both ideational and institutional analyses have clear analytical value in their own terms but, under many circumstances, it is the combination of the two perspectives that allows for a full understanding of policy trajectories. In this article we suggest that, to improve our understanding of how ideas and institutions interact to produce change, it is important to break down these two overly…
Conservatives, partisan dynamics and the politics of universality
This article explores the politics of universal family, health and pension programmes in the UK and Canada during recent periods of conservative rule. The analysis provides grounds for exploring partisan dynamics while testing what happened when the principle of universality clashed with fiscal and political pressures to restructure the welfare state. As suggested, in both countries, universality has remained stronger in the field of healthcare t…
Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act
There is a large body of literature devoted to how “policies create politics” and how feedback effects from existing policy legacies shape potential reforms in a particular area. Although much of this literature focuses on self‐reinforcing feedback effects that increase support for existing policies over time, Kent Weaver and his colleagues have recently drawn our attention to self‐undermining effects that can gradually weaken support for such po…
Stuck in neutral? Federalism, policy instruments, and counter-cyclical responses to Covid-19 in the United States
Federalism plays a foundational role in structuring public expectations about how the United States will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as both an unprecedented public-health crisis and an economic recession. As in prior crises, state governments are expected to be primary sites of governing authority, especially when it comes to immediate public-health needs, while it is assumed that the federal government will supply critical counter-cyclica…
Explaining Intergovernmental Conflict in the Covid-19 Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. than in Australia and Canada. This article considers three variables for this cross-national divergence: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; vertical party integration; and strength of intergovernmental arrangements. We find that the U.S. presidential system, contrary to parliamentarism in Canada and Australia, provided an opportunity for a populi…
Social policy responses to Covid ‐19 in Canada and the United States
Canada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare‐state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian govern…
Designing policy resilience
The Universal Decline of Universality? Social Policy Change in C anada, D enmark, S weden and the UK
The debate about the future of universal social programmes has been raging for years, both in social‐democratic and in liberal welfare states. The objective of this article is to contribute to the literature on universality by analyzing the evolution of universal social programmes in two social‐democratic and two liberal countries: D enmark, S weden, C anada and the UK . This choice of countries provides the opportunity to investigate whether the…
Breaking down ideas and institutions
As the existing comparative policy literature suggests, both ideational and institutional analyses have clear analytical value in their own terms but, under many circumstances, it is the combination of the two perspectives that allows for a full understanding of policy trajectories. In this article we suggest that, to improve our understanding of how ideas and institutions interact to produce change, it is important to break down these two overly…
Reassessing Policy Drift
As formulated by Jacob Hacker, the concept of policy drift turned institutional theories of public policy on their heads by suggesting that consequential policy changes often happen in the absence of reform. Especially prevalent in times of political gridlock or stasis, policy drift is a useful concept for capturing how inaction can gradually diminish the effectiveness of social programmes over time. By highlighting cases of difficult‐to‐see poli…
From Thatcher (and Pinochet) to Clinton? Conservative Think Tanks, Foreign Models and US Pensions Reform
Redesigning the Welfare Contract in Theory and Practice
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 was a landmark in American social policy. There were a number of objectives, but the primary purpose was to end the Aid to Families with Dependent Children programme which was a cash benefit paid to poor, very largely single-parent, families. The underlying theme was that AFDC had constituted a 'something for nothing' programme which had violated the primacy of work. The Act acknowledge…
Covid-19, poverty reduction, and partisanship in Canada and the United States
Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, polic…
Third way social policy
English This article examines the success of the Clinton administration in developing a distinctive third way agenda in social policy by studying the record of the administration through the lens of ‘pre-emptive presidential leadership’ as outlined by Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek sees this as a leadership style which is decidedly instrumental in its outlook, and which is thus unlikely to develop a lasting ideological legacy. Clinton’s initial hea…
Social Policy Responses to Rising Inflation in Canada and the United States
Social policies’ responsiveness to rising inflation depends in large part on whether they contain automatic indexation mechanisms, which ensure that the real value of wages and benefits expands during inflationary periods. Here we compare how the indexation of Canadian and U.S. policies on pensions, minimum wages, and food security have affected their responsiveness to the recent cost-of-living crisis. Three main conclusions emerge from our analy…
Unidentical twins
There is a vast social policy literature on how Canada and the United States share key characteristics associated with the liberal welfare regime such as significant reliance on both social assistance and tax-subsidized private benefits and services. Yet, a closer look at these two countries points to key differences in areas such as fiscal federalism, health care, old-age pensions, and family benefits. This special issue of the Journal of Compar…
Paths to (de)centralization
Drawing on the existing welfare state literature, this article offers a comparative analytical framework to account for the territorial dynamics of social policy in the United States and the People’s Republic of China, two countries that are most dissimilar in terms of political regime but that may exhibit similar territorial patterns of social policy fragmentation. A promising way to explore such patterns, we argue, is to analyze how changes in …
Obamacare and the Politics of Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States
In the USA, universal coverage has long been a key objective of liberal reformers. Yet, despite the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) in 2010, the USA is not set to provide health care coverage to all, even if and when that reform is fully implemented. This article explores this issue by asking the following question: Why was a clear commitment to universal coverage, the norm in ot…
President Bush and Social Policy
Journal Article President Bush and Social Policy: The Strange Case of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Get access Douglas Jaenicke, Douglas Jaenicke DOUGLAS JAENICKE is a lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester in the UK, where he teaches American politics. He has published articles on U.S. health policy, abortion politics, and political parties. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Alex Wadd…
Recent incremental health care reforms in the US
English US health care is well known for its high cost and high levels of uninsurance. Following the political failure of the Clinton health care reform plan many commentators suggested that incremental reform was the way to remedy these problems. To be transformative, however, incrementalism must entail more than the claim that incremental reforms are politically viable; rather, such reforms must represent a coherent strategy. To evaluate the pr…
US Republicans and the New Fusionism
US Republicanism and conservatism were structured around ‘fusionism’ from the 1950s onwards. Disparate ideas and interests were ‘fused’ in a broad coalitional bloc that was based upon a commitment to free markets, moral or cultural traditionalism and a commitment to US national security, as well as global power projection. There have, however, been significant shifts in recent years as many Republicans have turned against the larger corporations …
President Obama, poverty, and the scope and limits of social policy change
There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and ask…
Obamacare in the Trump Era
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is the most significant US social policy reform in half a century, and the most politically fractious. Since the law was signed by President Obama, Republicans have mobilised against it, using courts and state governments to undermine the implementation of the legislation, which was set to unfold gradually over a nine‐year period. As we describe in this article, however, t…
The Obama Presidency and Health Insurance Reform
During the 2008 federal campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama placed comprehensive health care reform at the centre of his platform. In the light of the growing problems facing the US health care system, the time seemed ripe for another attempt to control health costs while expanding insurance coverage. Elected in the context of the deepest recession since World War II, President Obama nonetheless decided to reform the US healt…
Assessing policy transfer from the United States to the British National Health Service
Much has been written about the claim that the British National Health Service (NHS) is becoming more like the US health care system, something a number of commentators view as a form of "Americanization".Yet, that term is imprecise and unhelpful for rigorous analysis of what has, and has not, happened.This paper uses the lens of policy transfer to explore this issue, which provides a sharper insight into policy development.The paper examines the…
Policy change in flat pensions
Adopting a historical and comparative perspective, this article explores the politics of flat old‐age pensions in the U nited K ingdom ( UK ) and C anada, two liberal countries in which this type of program is at the foundation of the public pension system. The article focuses on changes that affect eligibility criteria and benefit levels. It concludes that, in both countries, pension reform efforts have followed contradictory trajectories but, o…
The Obama Administration and United States Trade Policy
For all the focus on economic issues in the wake of the crisis of 2008 the Obama administration has remained ambiguous about a central component of economic policy. As both candidate and President, Obama has sent mixed messages about trade policy. This ambiguity reflects wider uncertainty within the Democratic Party about global trading relationships and this paper explores and assesses the reasons for this uncertainty. A large part of the answer…
From Thatcher (and Pinochet) to Clinton? Conservative Think Tanks, Foreign Models and US Pensions Reform
Paternalisms
Third way social policy
English This article examines the success of the Clinton administration in developing a distinctive third way agenda in social policy by studying the record of the administration through the lens of ‘pre-emptive presidential leadership’ as outlined by Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek sees this as a leadership style which is decidedly instrumental in its outlook, and which is thus unlikely to develop a lasting ideological legacy. Clinton’s initial hea…
Redesigning the Welfare Contract in Theory and Practice
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 was a landmark in American social policy. There were a number of objectives, but the primary purpose was to end the Aid to Families with Dependent Children programme which was a cash benefit paid to poor, very largely single-parent, families. The underlying theme was that AFDC had constituted a 'something for nothing' programme which had violated the primacy of work. The Act acknowledge…
Sanctions
In 1996 the United States embarked on a radical welfare-to-work experiment. A key element of this was the use of sanctions against welfare recipients who did not participate in work-related activities, yet the actual use of enforcement has been relatively under-reported. This article charts how sanctions have been implemented. It shows that there has not been a one-dimensional approach, with significant differences in the rules applied by differe…
The Social Policies Presidents Make
Grounded in Stephen Skowronek's typology of presidential leadership, this paper furthers our understanding of ‘pre-emptive leadership’ through a comparative analysis of the welfare and Social Security reforms pursued by US presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Although not identical, their experience in these areas provides valuable insight into the difficulty of wielding power in an inhospitable political environment. The paper starts with …
President Bush and Social Policy
Journal Article President Bush and Social Policy: The Strange Case of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Get access Douglas Jaenicke, Douglas Jaenicke DOUGLAS JAENICKE is a lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester in the UK, where he teaches American politics. He has published articles on U.S. health policy, abortion politics, and political parties. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Alex Wadd…
Recent incremental health care reforms in the US
English US health care is well known for its high cost and high levels of uninsurance. Following the political failure of the Clinton health care reform plan many commentators suggested that incremental reform was the way to remedy these problems. To be transformative, however, incrementalism must entail more than the claim that incremental reforms are politically viable; rather, such reforms must represent a coherent strategy. To evaluate the pr…
Conservative Ideas and Social Policy in the United States
This article explores social policy development in the United States since the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency. Starting from an analysis of the discourse about compassionate conservatism at the centre of the 2000 presidential campaign and proceeding to a discussion of the meaning of the more recent ownership society blueprint, it underlines the fragmented nature of the conservative policy agenda in the United States. Yet, the article …
Taking ‘Big Government Conservatism’ Seriously? The Bush Presidency Reconsidered
This article reflects on the ongoing debate about the ideological direction of the Bush presidency and what it means for the future of US conservatism in domestic policy. The paper considers the dual nature of US conservatism and then goes on to explore the ‘conservative promise’ of the 2000 presidential election and the debate over what critiques of the Bush administration have come to call ‘big government conservatism’. Finally, the article stu…
The US safety net, inequality and the Great Recession
Since the mid-1970s, the United States (US) has experienced widening income and wealth inequality. Over the same period, moreover, the official poverty rate has not declined. These trends framed the socioeconomic environment as the US entered the Great Recession in 2008. This article examines the manner in which that recession affected the US, especially those people in lowincome households who were already economically vulnerable. The article as…
The Obama Administration and United States Trade Policy
For all the focus on economic issues in the wake of the crisis of 2008 the Obama administration has remained ambiguous about a central component of economic policy. As both candidate and President, Obama has sent mixed messages about trade policy. This ambiguity reflects wider uncertainty within the Democratic Party about global trading relationships and this paper explores and assesses the reasons for this uncertainty. A large part of the answer…
The politics of social policy change
This article examines what key reform attempts made during the Clinton and Bush presidencies reveal about the wider possibilities for social policy change in the US. Why were Presidents Clinton and Bush able to achieve their goals in some policy realms but not others? As argued, institutional variation from one policy area to another largely helps answer this question. Yet, the analysis also suggests that paying close attention to the strategic i…
Social Policy Review 24
This edition of Social Policy Review marks the 40th anniversary of a publication from the UK Social Policy Association devoted to presenting an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship. It includes a special Anniversary Preface celebrating the publication's evolution and distinctive contributions. Continuing its reputation as a cutting edge, international publication in social policy, Part One of this edition analyse…
The Politics of Policy Change
This piece is a translation of the introduction of the book Politics of Policy Change: Welfare, Medicare, and Social Security Reform in the United States. The authors, Daniel Beland and Alex Waddan compare and contrast three major reform episodes affecting three distinct policy areas: the 1996 welfare reform, the 2003 Medicare reform, and the failed 2005 Social Security privatization campaign. They focus on three policy areas rather than on one, …
The Obama Presidency and Health Insurance Reform
During the 2008 federal campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama placed comprehensive health care reform at the centre of his platform. In the light of the growing problems facing the US health care system, the time seemed ripe for another attempt to control health costs while expanding insurance coverage. Elected in the context of the deepest recession since World War II, President Obama nonetheless decided to reform the US healt…
The U.S. Welfare State Since 1970
From the New Deal era through the Great Society the U.S. welfare state underwent a period of expansion, but from the mid-1970s onward the ideas underpinning welfare-state growth came under attack from conservative commentators and political actors. In addition, the assumption that the resources were available to finance further expansion of the state’s social welfare role was challenged. This essay looks at what happened to foster this mood of do…
Conservatives, partisan dynamics and the politics of universality
This article explores the politics of universal family, health and pension programmes in the UK and Canada during recent periods of conservative rule. The analysis provides grounds for exploring partisan dynamics while testing what happened when the principle of universality clashed with fiscal and political pressures to restructure the welfare state. As suggested, in both countries, universality has remained stronger in the field of healthcare t…
The Universal Decline of Universality? Social Policy Change in C anada, D enmark, S weden and the UK
The debate about the future of universal social programmes has been raging for years, both in social‐democratic and in liberal welfare states. The objective of this article is to contribute to the literature on universality by analyzing the evolution of universal social programmes in two social‐democratic and two liberal countries: D enmark, S weden, C anada and the UK . This choice of countries provides the opportunity to investigate whether the…
Policy change in flat pensions
Adopting a historical and comparative perspective, this article explores the politics of flat old‐age pensions in the U nited K ingdom ( UK ) and C anada, two liberal countries in which this type of program is at the foundation of the public pension system. The article focuses on changes that affect eligibility criteria and benefit levels. It concludes that, in both countries, pension reform efforts have followed contradictory trajectories but, o…
Obamacare, Universal Credit, and the Trilemma of Public Services
Breaking down ideas and institutions
As the existing comparative policy literature suggests, both ideational and institutional analyses have clear analytical value in their own terms but, under many circumstances, it is the combination of the two perspectives that allows for a full understanding of policy trajectories. In this article we suggest that, to improve our understanding of how ideas and institutions interact to produce change, it is important to break down these two overly…
Obamacare and the Politics of Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States
In the USA, universal coverage has long been a key objective of liberal reformers. Yet, despite the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) in 2010, the USA is not set to provide health care coverage to all, even if and when that reform is fully implemented. This article explores this issue by asking the following question: Why was a clear commitment to universal coverage, the norm in ot…
Reassessing Policy Drift
As formulated by Jacob Hacker, the concept of policy drift turned institutional theories of public policy on their heads by suggesting that consequential policy changes often happen in the absence of reform. Especially prevalent in times of political gridlock or stasis, policy drift is a useful concept for capturing how inaction can gradually diminish the effectiveness of social programmes over time. By highlighting cases of difficult‐to‐see poli…
Why Are There No Universal Social Programs in the United States?
Much has been written about “American exceptionalism” in social policy, but one aspect has received relatively little attention thus far: the absence of universal public social programs where entitlements to benefits and services are derived from citizenship or residency. This absence is especially striking because other liberal welfare regimes such as Canada and the United Kingdom have long developed such programs. Focusing on policy design and …
Political science (41 obras) · Law (35 obras) · Politics (34 obras) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (32 obras) · Law (30 obras) · Public Administration (29 obras) · Economics (28 obras) · Public Administration (25 obras) · Political economy (22 obras) · Sociology (18 obras)