When effect becomes cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change

World Politics

Volumn 45, Issue 4, 1993, Pages 595-628

  Pierson, Paul ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34248236719     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: 10863338     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2950710     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. E. E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1935), 288.
2. For a range of “new institutionalist” analyses, see Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Reusche-meyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
3. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989);
4. Kenneth A. Shepsle, “Studying Institutions: Some Lessons from the Rational Choice Approach, é Journal of Theoretical Politics 1 (April 1989);
5. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
6. In addition to the scholarship of Theda Skocpol reviewed in this essay, see, for example, Skowronek (fn. 2); Peter A. Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986);
7. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
8. Jack L. Walker, Jr., Mobilizing Interest Groups in America: Patrons, Professions and Social Movements (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 54.
9. Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol, “State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynes-ian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States, ” in Evans, Reuschemeyer, and Skocpol (fn. 2), 143—144.
10. The Farm Bureau's development has been widely linked to policy feedback, even by scholars not inclined to emphasize the independent role of government activity. In his classic study of interest groups, Mancur Olson argues that “the Farm Bureau was created by the government.” Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 149.
11. David B. Truman also identified “the aid of federal officials” as important in launching the Farm Bureau. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 87–93.
12. On policy feedback in agriculture, see also Terry M. Moe, The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the Internal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 181-91;
13. Richard Valelly, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989);
14. John Mark Hansen, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), chaps. 2–3.
15. David Vogel, Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 13–14.
16. On the importance of political entrepreneurs, see Mancur Olson (fn. 5); Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 35-37; and Moe (fn. 5), 37–39.
17. See, for example, Christine L. Day, What Older Americans Think: Interest Groups and Aging Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Thanks to Kent Weaver for bringing this example to my attention.
18. Bo Rothstein, “Labor Market Institutions and Working-Class Strength, ” in Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth (fn. 3).
19. Philippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds., Trends toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979);
20. Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
21. John H. Goldthorpe, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)
22. See, for example, Samuel Brittan, The Role and Limits of Government: Essays in Political Economy (London: Temple Smith, 1983).
23. Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Random House, 1966);
24. George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation, ” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (Spring 1971).
25. For interesting discussions of path dependency, see Stephen Krasner, “Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics, ” Comparative Politics 16 (January 1984);
26. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Agenda: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), chap. 1.
27. Georgia Duerst-Lahti, “The Government's Role in Building the Women's Movement, ” Political Science Quarterly 104 (Summer 1989).
28. G. John Ikenberry, Reasons of State: Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).
29. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974);
30. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990–1992 (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwells, 1992).
31. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Conclusion: Domestic Structures and Strategies of Foreign Economic Policy, ” in Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978);
32. John Zysman, Governments, Markets and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change (Ith-aca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983).
33. Paul David, “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY, ” American Economic Review 75 (May 1985).
34. W. Brian Arthur, “Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Economics, ” in Philip W. Anderson, Kenneth J. Arrow, and David Pines, eds., The Economy as an Evolving Complex System (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1988);
35. W. Brian Arthur, “Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events, ” Economic Journal 99 (March 1989).
36. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (C ford: Oxford University Press, 1985), esp. chap. 11;
37. Michael N. Danielson, The Politics Exclusion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).
38. Paul Pierson, “ ‘Policy Feedbacks’ and Political Change: Contrasting Reagan and Thatcher's Pension-Reform Initiatives, ” Studies in American Political Development 6 (Fall 1992).
39. Interestingly, within political science the idea of “lock-ins” (though focusing on institutions rather than policies) has mainly been utilized in the field of international relations. See for example Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 100–106.
40. Keohane draws on Arthur Stinchcombe's analysis of sunk costs. See Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968), 120–25.
41. Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, “Two Faces of Power, ” American Political Science Review 56 (1962).
42. For a pathbreaking study of networks of social interdependence, see Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).
43. The contribution of public policies to the development of these social networks is discussed in more detail in Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976);
44. Alfred E. Kahn, “The Tyranny of Small Decisions: Market Failures, Imperfections, and the Limits of Economics, ” Kyklos 19 (1966).
45. For an introduction to the ways in which these kinds of arguments are reshaping institutional analysis, see March and Olsen (fn. 2); and Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
46. Hugh Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 305.
47. See, for example, Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957);
48. Charles E. Lindblom, “The ‘Science’ of Muddling Through, ” Public Administration Review 19 (Spring 1959);
49. James G. March, “Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity, and the Engineering of Choice, ” Bell Journal of Economics 9 (Autumn 1978).
50. Bradford A. Lee, “The Miscarriage of Necessity and Invention: Proto-Keynesianism and Democratic States in the 1930s, ” in Hall, 129–70.
51. See also Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol, “ ‘Why Not Equal Protection?’: Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900–1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920, ” American Sociological Review 49 (December 1984);
52. Ann Shola Orloff, “The Political Origins of America's Belated Welfare State, ” in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds, The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
53. Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy-Making in Britain, ” Comparative Politics (forthcoming). See also idem, “Conclusion: The Politics of Keynesian Ideas, ” in Hall, 361–91.
54. On Vietnam, see David Fromkin and James Chace, “What Are the Lessons of Vietnam?” Foreign Affairs 63 (Spring 1985).
55. On the War on Poverty, consider the contrasting lessons drawn in Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984);
56. John E. Schwartz, America's Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987). I am grateful to Peter Hall for suggesting these examples to me.
57. Henry J. Aaron, Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1978).
58. Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies, ” American Sociological Review 51 (April 1986).
59. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 143.
60. Edwin Amenta, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Jefren Olsen, Sunita Parikh, and Theda Skocpol, “The Political Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Five American States, ” Studies in American Political Development 2 (1987).
61. This perhaps explains why students of foreign policy-making, which often features decision making by small groups or even single individuals, have had a particular interest in learning processes. See the literature reviewed in Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), chap. 1. Khong's work offers an ambitious and thoughtful attempt to address many of the objections to learning arguments.
62. On the importance of the scope of conflict, see E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1960).
63. Kingdon makes this point in his careful study of the policy-making process. John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).
64. James H. Kuklinski, “Information and the Study of Politics, ” in John Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski, Information and Democratic Processes, 391.
65. See, for example, Herman B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced: The Quiet Side of Public Spending (New York: Basic Books, 1986), chap. 4.
66. Harold Wilensky, The New Corporatism, Centralization, and the Welfare State (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976)
67. See also Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr., and Henrik Jess Madsen, “Public Reactions to the Growth of Taxation and Government Expenditure, ” World Politics 33 (April 1981).
68. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 80–81.
69. R. Kent Weaver, “The Politics of Blame Avoidance, ” Journal of Public Policy 6 (Octo-ber-December 1986).
70. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
71. This is much more likely to be true in an institutional setting like that of the United States, where the location of accountability is often uncertain. See Paul Pierson and R. Kent Weaver, “Political Institutions and Loss Imposition: Pensions Policy in Britain, Canada and the United States, ” in R. Kent Weaver and Burt Rockman, eds., Do Institutions Matter? Government Capabilities in the U.S. and Abroad (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993).
72. R. Kent Weaver, Automatic Government; The Politics of Indexation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988).
73. Arnold (fn. 54), 48n. For an interesting effort to explore this issue, see Deborah Stone, “Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas, ” Political Science Quarterly 104 (Summer 1989).
74. Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies and Analysis in Current Research, ” in Evans, Reuschemeyer, and Skocpol (fn. 5), 17.
75. Theodore J. Lowi, “American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory, ” World Politics 16 (July 1964);
76. idem “Four Systems of Policy, Politics, and Choice, ” Public Administration Review 32 (July-August 1972);
77. James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 330-37
78. and idem. American Government, 4th ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1989), 422–47, 590–604.
79. Ferejohn and Kuklinski (fn. 48); Keith Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991);
80. Mathew M. McCubbins and Terry Sullivan, eds., Congress: Structure and Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).