Book contents
- Responsive States
- Responsive States
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Federalism and Policy Feedback
- 2 The Surprising Persistence of Unemployment Insurance
- 3 The Brief Life of the Sheppard–Towner Act
- 4 The Remarkable Expansion of Medicaid
- 5 The Rise and Demise of General Revenue Sharing
- 6 How Superfund Sowed the Seeds of Its Own Instability
- 7 No Child Left Behind and the Politics of State Resistance
- 8 Policy Design, Polarization, and the Affordable Care Act
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Federalism and Policy Feedback
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2019
- Responsive States
- Responsive States
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Federalism and Policy Feedback
- 2 The Surprising Persistence of Unemployment Insurance
- 3 The Brief Life of the Sheppard–Towner Act
- 4 The Remarkable Expansion of Medicaid
- 5 The Rise and Demise of General Revenue Sharing
- 6 How Superfund Sowed the Seeds of Its Own Instability
- 7 No Child Left Behind and the Politics of State Resistance
- 8 Policy Design, Polarization, and the Affordable Care Act
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The first step in identifying the factors that explain why state officials’ reactions to national initiatives range from enthusiasm to indifference to antagonism is recognizing that public policies are not only the result of broader social and political processes; they also have the potential to reshape existing political dynamics. In particular, policy decisions made at one moment in time have the potential to influence political struggles years or even decades later, with implications for the policy’s long-term stability. These policy feedback effects take two forms. First, self-reinforcing processes can make a policy’s developmental trajectory difficult to reverse by hindering the adoption of previously plausible alternatives (Skocpol 1992; Weir 1992; Pierson 2004). Second, public policies can generate self-undermining dynamics that diminish rather than reinforce their own long-term viability (Jacobs and Weaver 2015; Oberlander and Weaver 2015; Weaver 2010).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Responsive StatesFederalism and American Public Policy, pp. 13 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019