Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T12:26:14.194Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Tax Credit Scholarships in an Era of Republican Dominance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Ursula Hackett
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Get access

Summary

The sluggish growth of vouchers into the first decade of the twenty-first century prompted voucher supporters to reevaluate their strategy. Ballot initiatives proved fruitless, so supporters switched to state legislatures and sought to distance the state from private schools by funding vouchers through tax credits rather than direct appropriation. The full fruits of attenuated governance matured with Republican victories during Barack Obama’s presidency. This chapter shows that the doubly distanced tax credit form enabled individualist and accommodationist forces to divert public funds to private religious institutions without appearing to do so. Due to the lingering importance of communitarian public schooling and secularist approaches to church–state relations among the nation’s many judges, doubly distanced policies were safest. Statistical analysis demonstrates that they were, and are, least likely to be challenged in court or struck down as unconstitutional. Attenuation is a powerful strategy for rival forces in America’s foundational struggles because it enables policymakers to achieve their goals obliquely. The link between state and legally controversial policy outputs is plausibly deniable in crucial venues of policy contestation, provided that elites follow the attenuation strategy consistently.

Type
Chapter
Information
America's Voucher Politics
How Elites Learned to Hide the State
, pp. 137 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×