2.1.1 State Capacities

In Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 58) explains how policy feedback can take the form of an expansion of state capacities (on this issue, see also Reference OrloffOrloff 1993: 90). This is the case because, as they are being implemented, “policies transform or expand the capacities of the state,” while changing “the administrative possibilities for official initiatives in the future, and affect later prospects for policy implementation” (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992: 58). According to Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 59), a policy can be understood as successful if it leads to an expansion of the “state capacities that can promote its future development, and especially if it stimulates expansion.” Here, the idea is that newly established policies can contribute to state-building in a way that, through self-reinforcing processes, promotes future policy expansion.

In Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992) illustrates this type of policy feedback with the development of the Bureau of Pensions, which was tasked with administering benefits for Union veterans in the aftermath of the US Civil War (1861–5). Because of the gradual expansion of these benefits, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 58) suggests, “the Bureau of Pensions became one of the largest and most active agencies of the federal government.” The development of Civil War pensions increased state capacities while creating a bureaucratic lobby within the federal government that supported the expansion of the program over time. In the end, however, the relationship between partisan patronage and Civil War pensions weakened support for them and even political momentum for the creation of a broader system of old-age pensions in the United States before the New Deal (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992).

An even more striking case of how policy feedback can increase state capacities and stimulate the formation of bureaucratic lobbies that support the expansion of existing policies is the case of US Social Security, which Reference DerthickDerthick (1979) documented long before the concept of policy feedback emerged as an analytical concept. Later scholars have further documented policy feedback related to state-building in the case of Social Security (Reference BélandBéland 2005). Enacted in 1935, Social Security is an earnings-related pension program operated by the federal government. Soon the bureaucrats in charge of the management of Social Security emerged as knowledgeable and skillful allies of the program, which they protected against cutbacks during World War II, when the program faced much political opposition from both within and outside the federal government, at a time when the relatively new program had yet to build a strong constituency of beneficiaries (Reference CatesCates 1983; Reference DerthickDerthick 1979). Later, during the post–World War II era, bureaucrats and political appointees operating within the Social Security Administration (SSA) promoted the expansion of the program by framing the agenda of the regularly held advisory councils tasked to evaluate and make recommendations about the then growing federal social insurance program (Reference DerthickDerthick 1979). Over time, SSA officials lobbied Congress and presidents in support of Social Security expansion and the enactment of new social programs such as Medicare, which was adopted in 1965 (Reference BerkowitzBerkowitz 2003; Reference DerthickDerthick 1979). Other factors also contributed to the expansion of Social Security and the federal welfare state in the post–World War II era, but the state capacities and internal lobbying power of SSA, itself a by-product of Social Security development, played a major role in the politics of social policy in the United States (Reference BélandBéland 2005; Reference DerthickDerthick 1979).

2.1.2 Interest Groups

The second type of policy feedback discussed in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers is about how existing public policies can shape the “social identities, goals, and capabilities of groups that subsequently struggle or ally in politics” (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992: 58). This type of policy feedback concerns the impact of existing policies on the development over time of interest groups that have a stake in the policy process (Reference PiersonPierson 1993: 598–605). As Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 59) puts it, “public social or economic measures may have the effect of stimulating brand-new social identities and political capacities” that may mobilize to preserve existing policies.

In Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 59) shows how the development of Civil War pensions fostered the emergence of interest group organizations organically tied to these public policies. The key organization was the Grand Army of the Republic, the largest organization representing Union veterans. In her analysis, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992: 111) suggests that the expansion of Civil War pensions over time stimulated an increase in the membership of the Grand Army of the Republic, which, in turn, “intensified the interest” of this organization “in pension legislation and administration.” This feedback loop led the Grand Army of the Republic to “set up a Washington-based Pensions Committee to lobby Congress and the Pension Bureau” (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992: 111).

More generally, the work of Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1992) and others (Reference PiersonPierson 1993) suggests that the nature of existing public policies shapes the formation of interest groups and their political mobilization over these policies and within the policy arena. Clearly massive economic and social programs that allocate benefits to large segments of the population are more likely to stimulate the emergence of large and powerful constituencies associated with important interest group organizations that are likely to get involved in the debates over the future of these programs. Conversely, more targeted programs might generate weaker constituencies and related interest groups that have less political clout when the time comes to discuss the future of these programs (Reference PiersonPierson 1994).

These general remarks are illustrated by the HI scholarship on US social policy concerning the contrast between social assistance benefits directed at “dependent” populations and social insurance benefits directed at “advantaged” populations. For instance, Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1990) wrote about the political weakness of social assistance programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which would end in 1996 as a consequence of the controversial federal “welfare reform” (Reference WeaverWeaver 2000). For Reference SkocpolSkocpol (1990), programs for the poor such as AFDC are “poor programs” that should be replaced by measures offering universal coverage that create broader constituencies and, consequently, more resilient social policies in the long run. Although evidence suggests that some targeted programs such as US Medicaid, which provides health insurance to disadvantaged families and citizens, can grow to generate broader political support over time (Reference HowardHoward 2007), massive social insurance programs that create large constituencies can prove more resilient in the longer term under certain conditions. For instance, this is likely to be the case when these programs generate powerful third-party allies such as governors. The case of the US Medicaid program for low-income people (Reference RoseRose 2013) suggests that even programs with weak beneficiaries can become resilient over time if they generate strong political allies. Large social insurance programs are especially likely to become resilient when they target politically “advantaged” groups like older people, as is the case with US Social Security (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003; Reference PiersonPierson 1993). The example of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), one of the most powerful interest groups in the United States, illustrates this reality; this interest group organization expanded at the same time as Social Security, before getting involved in the politics of the Social Security reform (on the AARP, see Reference LynchLynch 2011). Policy feedback can also shape concrete interest group organizations over time, a topic studied by Reference GossKristin Goss (2012) in her book The Paradox of Gender Equality: How American Women’s Groups Gained and Lost Their Public Voice. In this qualitative analysis of the collective mobilization of women in the United States over more than a century, Reference GossGoss (2012: 18) looks at the impact of policy feedback on concrete social movement organizations, an approach that allows her to explore “how different types of feedback effects interact to affect the scope and nature of groups’ policy engagements.” Reference GossGoss (2012: 184) demonstrates how policies created in the 1960s shaped the collective action of women in the United States by offering “tangible antidiscrimination protections that women’s groups rallied to defend and expand” as well as “resources (networks, conferences, money) to support women’s organizing.”

2.1.3 Lock-In Effects

Within the HI tradition, the most widely cited publication on policy feedback is Reference PiersonPaul Pierson’s (1993) article “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change.” Although it appeared only a year after Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992), one of the books Pierson engaged with, this review essay provided a much more systematic take on policy feedback than anything that had been published on the topic before. In his article, Reference PiersonPierson (1993) explored issues such as the cognitive side of policy feedback associated with policy learning and the potential influence of existing policies on mass politics, thus anticipating what would become a central avenue for policy feedback research in the years and decades to come.

Another key contribution of Pierson’s seminal article was to introduce the concept of “lock-in effects” to the policy feedback literature. Drawing on a recently published book by the economist Reference NorthDouglass North (1990), Reference PiersonPierson (1993: 608) showed how

Reference PiersonPierson (1994) applied the concept of policy feedback as lock-in effects in his book Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. In this influential book, lock-in effects are especially central to the discussion about pensions reform, with reference to US Social Security. As Reference PiersonPierson (1994: 172) suggests in his analysis of lock-in effects, “sunk costs resulting from previous decisions in pension policy created lock-in effects that greatly constrained Reagan’s options on Social Security.”

2.1.4 The Multiple Faces of Policy Feedback

Over time, HI generated other perspectives on policy feedback that built on the early scholarship discussed in Sections 2.1–2.1.3 to explore the multifaceted nature of how existing policies can shape the politics of public policy (Reference BélandBéland 2010; Reference Béland and SchlagerBéland and Schlager 2019b). One of these approaches concerns the claim that, just like public policies, state-regulated private social benefits can shape politics over time. Particularly influential here is the work of Reference HackerJacob Hacker (2002) on how, in the United States, the development of private health and pension benefits has led to the emergence of a “divided welfare state” (the title of his book), in which feedback effects from both public and private social benefits are closely intertwined in both their social functions and the political effects they generate over time. Therefore, it is possible to argue that private benefits “may impact political mobilisation and public expectations in much the same way that widely distributed public benefits do, creating strong political incentives for the maintenance or encouragement of existing private networks of social provision” (Reference Béland and HackerBéland and Hacker 2004: 46). The example of health care in the United States perfectly illustrates this claim, as both public policies such as Medicaid and Medicare and private institutions such as health insurance have shaped the politics of reform, including the enactment in 2010 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Reference Jacobs and WeaverJacobs and Weaver 2015). More generally, even when it does not explicitly refer to the concept of policy feedback, the extensive literature on welfare state development demonstrates that the private side of policies can shape and constrain public policy reform over time (Reference Béland and GranBéland and Gran 2008; Reference Esping-AndersenEsping-Andersen 1990; Reference HowardHoward 1997; Reference KleinKlein 2003).

Another perspective available in the HI literature is the less developed but promising concept of “ideational policy feedback” (Reference LynchLynch 2006: 199). This concept refers to how specific ideas and symbols embedded in existing policy institutions can shape the politics of policy reform over time (Reference BélandBéland 2010). For instance, in a book on US social policy, Reference SteenslandBrian Steensland (2008) argued that the negatively connotated term “welfare” embedded in US social assistance policies contributed to reform failure in this policy area during the 1970s. This was the case because new reform proposals were seen in the mirror of the unpopular and controversial idea of “welfare,” which reduced support for them (Reference SteenslandSteensland 2008). As Reference SteenslandSteensland (2008: 10) suggests, his case study stresses the role of “interpretative feedback mechanisms,” which contrast with the “resource/incentive dimension of policy feedback processes” associated with lock-in effects (for a recent discussion of ideational policy feedback, see Reference Béland and SchlagerBéland and Schlager 2019b).

For many of the HI scholars cited so far, feedback effects from existing policies appeared as only one type of institutional process among others worth studying to explain policy development. While the expansion of the literature on policy feedback suggests that it now constitutes a stand-alone theory of the policy process (Reference Mettler, SoRelle, Sabatier and WeibleMettler and SoRelle 2018), returning to the early HI literature has the advantage of reminding us how feedback effects from existing policies do not always tell the whole story about the relationship between institutional processes and policy development. This is something we should keep in mind as we turn to the growing literature on mass politics, policy feedback, and public policy, which is discussed in Section 3.

3.2.1 Factors in Political Behavior

Political participation is a function of resources, mobilization, and political engagement, factors that arise from preadult socialization and education and from experiences in institutional settings such as work, voluntary organizations, and religious organizations (Reference Verba, Schlozman and BradyVerba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Policy feedback theory posits that policy experiences affect these drivers of political participation, as well as additional factors that influence political behavior, including stigma, norms, loss aversion, and traceability (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Policy feedback and political participation

Resources. Policies can confer politically relevant resources such as money, skills, free time, health, and financial stability, which increase participatory capacity and facilitate democratic acts such as voting, contacting elected officials, working on campaigns, attending political meetings, participating in rallies or protests, working with others on political problems, or making political donations. In the United States, Social Security, the federal old-age pension program, enhances the political participation of older US citizens by increasing their free time through retirement and boosting their incomes (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). The 1944 G.I. Bill increased political participation among veterans through enhanced education attainment (Reference MettlerMettler 2005). More recently, Medicaid expansion under the ACA boosted voter turnout among target groups (Reference Clinton and SancesClinton and Sances 2018; Reference HaselswerdtHaselswerdt 2017), apparently by increasing financial stability and physical and mental health, which are associated with political participation (Reference OjedaOjeda 2015; Reference Pacheco and FletcherPacheco and Fletcher 2015). In Mexico, voter turnout is higher in villages randomly selected for the rollout of a new anti-poverty cash transfer program (Reference De La ODe La O 2013).

Mobilization. Citizens are also more likely to participate in politics when asked to do so (Reference Verba, Schlozman and BradyVerba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). In conferring an age-related social welfare benefit, Social Security in the United States created a politically identifiable group that was subsequently mobilized by interest groups and political parties (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). State laws in the United States that mandate collective bargaining increase the political participation of teachers, apparently through union mobilization (Reference Flavin and HartneyFlavin and Hartney 2015). Under the ACA, social assistance agencies that help customers access health insurance also provide voter registration services, perhaps generating the higher voter participation found in Medicaid expansion states (Reference Clinton and SancesClinton and Sances 2018).

Engagement. Political engagement, including political information, political interest, and political efficacy, is another factor driving political participation (Reference Verba, Schlozman and BradyVerba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Over time, in the United States Social Security increased seniors’ interest in politics by tying their well-being to a government program while also enhancing their external political efficacy, the sense that government listens to people like them (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). Recipients of cash welfare who learn how to navigate a complex welfare bureaucracy have heightened levels of internal political efficacy, the sense that they have the competence to negotiate the political realm (Reference SossSoss 1999). In the United States, veterans who benefited from the G.I. Bill felt “reciprocity,” an obligation to participate in civic life in return for the gift of an unexpected education, which may be a form of efficacy as well (Reference MettlerMettler 2005).

Stigmatization and Authority Relations. Not all policy effects are positive. The “interpretive effects” that send messages to program clienteles about their place in the polity (Reference PiersonPierson 1993) have often been used to explain the diminished participation rates of those receiving targeted, means-tested social welfare benefits (Reference Schneider and IngramSchneider and Ingram’s (1993) concept of a negative social construction predicts a similar outcome). Cash welfare in the United States is conferred by gatekeeping case workers whose control over benefits and capricious application of rules undermine the external political efficacy of recipients, reducing their rates of political participation (Reference SossSoss 1999). Imposing conditionality, such as work requirements, further undermines political participation, as the needed monitoring sends the message that government does not trust the recipient, as the UK case shows (Reference WatsonWatson 2015). These negative interpretive effects can be passed on through socialization: Adolescents whose families receive means-tested assistance observe low levels of parental political participation and are less likely to participate in political activities available to youth, such as contacting public officials, boycotting, and discussing political issues (Reference Barnes and HopeBarnes and Hope 2017).

Targeted programs need not send negative citizenship messages, however. Early childhood programs in the United States and Denmark that incorporate low-income or minority parents into decision-making – allowing such parents to “coproduce” a service they receive from government – enhance parents’ skills and knowledge (a resource effect) and send positive interpretive messages that society views them as “capable and valuable” (Reference Hjortskov, Andersen and JakobsenHjortskov, Andersen, and Jakobsen 2018), increasing their efficacy and civic participation (see also Reference BarnesBarnes 2020; Reference Bruch, Ferree and SossBruch, Ferree, and Soss 2010; Reference SossSoss 1999). In the United States, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which supplements the wages of low-income workers by refunding their income and payroll taxes, generates “feelings of social inclusion” with administration through the universal tax system, not the welfare bureaucracy, and with provision as a lump sum, enabling “patterns of spending and saving that are not possible during other times of the year” and that resemble those of “ordinary” citizens, providing “at least partial access to the social rights of citizenship” (Reference Sykes, Kriz, Edin and Halpern-MeekinSykes et al. 2015, 244). Although this study does not examine the political behavior of EITC recipients, feedback theory would hypothesize higher participation rates among EITC recipients than among cash welfare recipients.

Norms. The messages that public policies send may also establish norms that influence political activity. Reference McDonaghEileen McDonagh (2010) argues that public policies that “represent maternal traits” send messages about “women’s suitability as political leaders”; in nations such as the United States, where maternal traits are demonstrated only in the home, not in the state, McDonagh asserts, fewer women are elected to political office. The provision of new rights may also establish norms enhancing participation. When female student athletes were reminded in an experiment of the purpose of Title IX (to reduce gender-based disparities in US higher education, including athletics), they reported a greater propensity to act to seek equity (although the study did not examine whether such students did act; Reference Druckman, Rothschild and SharrowDruckman, Rothschild, and Sharrow 2018).

Threats and Loss Aversion. Threats to policies may animate political participation as well, given individuals’ aversion to losses over equivalent gains (Reference Kahneman and TverskyKahneman and Tversky 1979). In the United States, senior citizens responded to proposed Social Security and Medicare cuts in the 1980s and 1990s with surges in letter-writing to elected officials, the only age group to do so, which helped defeat the proposed reductions (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003), an example of the protective constituency dynamic that Pierson posited. Threats emanating from policies may also spur participation. In states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, voter turnout was enhanced not only among Democrats who approved of the law but also among Republicans who opposed it, an apparent “policy backlash” (Reference HaselswerdtHaselswerdt 2017). Policies can impose sheer bodily threat that mobilizes as well. The parents of draft-eligible sons in the Vietnam War era were more likely to vote in the 1972 presidential election if their sons drew “losing” draft numbers (although we cannot know from voter records how these parents voted; Reference DavenportDavenport 2015). Latinos were more likely to vote in areas where the Secure Communities program rolled out, a program that heightened immigration enforcement by encouraging information sharing between federal and local law enforcement (Reference WhiteWhite 2016). Although government trust fell among Latinos in these areas (see Section 4), the program constituted a threat to families with mixed immigration status and may also have boosted turnout because of mobilization by immigration activists (Reference WhiteWhite 2016). Policies threatening Latinos in California during the 1990s (including Proposition 187, championed by the Republican governor Pete Wilson, which would have banned undocumented immigrants’ use of health care, public education, and other services) boosted Latino voters’ subsequent turnout and increased identification with the Democratic Party (Reference Bowler, Nicholson and SeguraBowler, Nicholson, and Segura 2006; Reference Pantoja, Ramirez and SeguraPantoja, Ramirez, and Segura 2001).

Traceability. Whether policies generate feedback effects may depend on their visibility and proximity (Reference GingrichGingrich 2014; Reference Soss and SchramSoss and Schram 2007). The Vietnam draft effect in the United States that Reference DavenportDavenport (2015) found was concentrated in towns with at least one casualty, increasing the visibility and salience of draft policy. Conversely, when visibility and proximity are muted – for example, when public functions are privatized, obscuring the role of government even when it still funds or regulates the programs – policy effects may not materialize (Reference Gingrich and WatsonGingrich and Watson 2016). A causal model shows that voter turnout for school board elections in the United States is lower in districts with privately operated charter schools (Reference Cook, Kogan, Lavertu and PeskowitzCook et al. 2020). The ACA provision allowing people under the age of twenty-six to remain on their parents’ health insurance did not increase voter turnout among youth in the United States, despite being popular and widely used; that parental insurance plans are private and funded by the parent may have been more salient than the government’s regulatory role in facilitating young people’s access (Reference ChattopadhyayChattopadhyay 2017).

3.2.2 Behavioral Outcomes

Extant policy feedback studies have examined a variety of behavioral outcomes, including voter turnout, vote choice (see Section 3.3 for effects on incumbent support and favorability), and individual political acts beyond voting, often finding that the provision of benefits enhances participation rates. Scholars have also examined whether program provision can counteract inequalities of participation found in many democracies. Feedback effects on collective forms of political action or nonpolitical acts such as volunteering have been examined as well.

Voter Turnout. The most common behavioral outcome examined in feedback studies is voter turnout, both because of its normative centrality to democratic politics and because of data availability. Policies such as Social Security (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003) and the G.I. Bill (Reference MettlerMettler 2005) in the United States as well as experience with public schools and clinics in Africa (Reference MacLeanMacLean 2011) are associated with greater participation; researchers attribute the participation boost to both resource and positive interpretive effects. Programs in the United States that are means-tested, such as cash welfare, or that are punitive, such as the criminal justice system, are associated with lower turnout (Reference SossSoss 1999; Reference Weaver and LermanWeaver and Lerman 2010), apparently because they send negative citizenship messages and because, in the case of the low benefits in US means-tested programs, resource effects are too small to increase turnout. The US Medicaid program is also means-tested, although analyses of its effects on turnout have produced contradictory results. Reference HaselswerdtHaselswerdt (2017) and Reference Clinton and SancesClinton and Sances (2018) – the latter using a causal model – show that Medicaid expansion during the ACA modestly increased turnout, and the economists Reference Baicker and FinkelsteinKatherine Baicker and Amy Finkelstein (2019) find that the near-randomized expansion of Medicaid carried out by the Oregon Health Insurance experiment of 2008 boosted turnout in that year’s presidential election by 7 percent, with particularly strong effects for men (18 percent increase) and in Democratic counties (10 percent increase). But these turnout increases dissipated quickly, and, outside of the ACA, Reference MichenerMichener (2018) finds that Medicaid receipt is associated with lower turnout, while the economist Reference Courtemanche, Marton and YelowitzCharles Courtemanche and colleagues (2020) find with a causal model that the collective effect of all ACA provisions intended to expand health insurance coverage (Medicaid expansion, the creation of subsidized insurance marketplaces, and various regulations) was only a small and statistically insignificant increase in voter turnout. Reference GayClaudine Gay (2012) similarly finds that the Moving to Opportunity randomized experiment, which moved low-income people out of high-poverty neighborhoods, reduced voter turnout, with some evidence that disrupted social networks were to blame. Hence, findings on means-tested programs and turnout, both associational and causal, are mixed.

Vote Choice. Policies conferring benefits can result in greater electoral support for incumbent governments. A causal study of state EITCs finds that governors are rewarded electorally for implementing an EITC program, with the largest effects for Republican governors and in counties with many benefiting voters, although the effects dissipate over time (Reference Rendleman and YoderRendleman and Yoder 2021). The implementation of an EITC in Italy similarly benefited incumbents electorally (Reference VannutelliVannutelli 2019). A causal analysis shows that a Romanian government program giving poor families coupons for computer purchase increased support for the incumbent governing coalition (Reference Pop-Eleches and Pop-ElechesPop-Eleches and Pop-Eleches 2012), while the Reference De La ODe La O (2013) causal study of the Progresa conditional cash transfer program in Mexico found both greater turnout and greater support for incumbents in villages with longer exposure to the program.

Political Activity beyond Voting. Some studies examine policy feedback effects for other political acts. The development of Social Security over time increased US seniors’ rates of contacting elected officials and of donating to and working on political campaigns (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). Program receipt can heighten rates of “civic participation,” such as working with others in organized groups (e.g., Reference MettlerMettler 2005). Farmers receiving payments from the US Department of Agriculture are more likely than other agricultural producers to run for office (Reference Simonovits, Malhotra, Ye Lee and HealySimonovits et al. 2021).

Equalizing Effects. In many democracies, political behavior is stratified by income and education. Redistributive public policies can offset this effect by enhancing resources and other politically relevant factors for the less privileged. Because in the United States Social Security constitutes a higher share of poorer seniors’ incomes, they are more likely to vote, contact elected officials, and make campaign contributions with the program in mind than are higher-income seniors, making seniors’ overall political participation less unequal than it would otherwise be (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). In that country, the educational benefits of the G.I. Bill had a curvilinear effect, boosting the civic participation of veterans from middle-income backgrounds more than those from lower-income families (for whom the resource boost was insufficient to spur great participation) or higher-income families (who would have enjoyed higher educational attainment anyway; Reference MettlerMettler 2005). The participatory effects that Reference MacLeanMacLean (2011) found in Africa are also offsetting: The most impoverished people in rural areas are the most likely to use public services and in turn are the most likely to participate in politics. Across European countries where greater early childhood expenditures and cash benefits increase voting among single mothers, the largest effects are for middle- and higher-income lone mothers, so these programs equalize participation between lone mothers and other demographic groups but not among such mothers (Reference ShoreShore 2020).

Behavioral Feedbacks beyond Individual-Level Political Participation. Finally, policies can affect nonpolitical participation. Across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), government social welfare retrenchment is associated with more volunteering, a behavioral feedback outside of politics (Reference SuzukiSuzuki 2020). And policies can affect group behavior, for example in locales where government programs are inadequate. In Zambia, low levels of government service provision encourage higher levels of collective behavior in which communities organize to respond to the need left by the “gap the state left,” as opposed to individual-level feedback (Reference HernHern 2017).

3.3.1 Factors in Attitudes

Individuals’ attitudes toward political objects arise from preadult socialization; symbolic attachments including partisanship, ideology, and racial sentiment; group attachments; self-interest and material stakes; personal experiences; and elite framing and priming. The policy feedback literature argues that the designs and effects of public policies can also affect attitudes, either because they alter some of these factors, such as self-interest and personal experience, or because they alter the conditions that allow these factors to function, such as making more or less visible the material stakes in government activity (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Policy feedback and political attitudes

Self-Interest and Personal Experience. The resources that many public policies confer constitute a material stake that may enhance individuals’ support for a given program. Survey respondents using subsidies or gaining insurance through the Affordable Care Act are more likely to say that the law has had a favorable impact on health access (Reference Jacobs and MettlerJacobs and Mettler 2018); similarly, approval of the ACA is higher in Medicaid expansion states, with the largest increase among lower education nonsenior adults, the expansion’s target population (Reference Sances and ClintonSances and Clinton 2021). Universal policies are typically more popular than targeted ones (Reference Cook and BarrettCook and Barrett 1992), perhaps because more people see themselves as current or potential beneficiaries. A US-based survey experiment finds that support for tuition-free college falls when the benefit is targeted to low-income families relative to a universal program design (Reference BellBell 2020).

Personal policy experience may also counteract the influence of other predispositions such as party identification. In the United States, those receiving Medicare (those just over the age sixty-five eligibility threshold, compared to those just under) are more supportive of Medicare spending and the ACA, with the effect stronger among Republicans (Reference Lerman and McCabeLerman and McCabe 2017). Similarly, the gap between Republicans and Democrats in ACA favorability is smaller among those who gained insurance through an ACA marketplace compared to those with employer-based insurance (Reference McCabeMcCabe 2016).

Threats. The asymmetry of gains and losses (Reference Kahneman and TverskyKahneman and Tversky 1979) means that threats to policies, both proposed and realized, affect attitudes just as they do behaviors. In the United States, ACA approval was higher in Medicaid expansion states compared to non-expansion states but only after the 2016 election made Republicans’ repeal threats more credible (Reference Sances and ClintonSances and Clinton 2021). When reduced benefits and stricter requirements for a universal Danish educational grant were announced while the European Social Survey was in the field, those interviewed after the announcement expressed less satisfaction with government compared to those interviewed earlier, particularly among those more likely to be affected by the cuts (Reference LarsenLarsen 2018).

Proximity, Visibility, and Traceability. This last result suggests that proximity, visibility, and traceability affect the likelihood that public policies will shape attitudes. In cases where policy changes have not produced attitudinal changes, lack of proximity or visibility is usually suspected. For example, the 1996 welfare reform in the United States, which imposed time limits and work requirements on cash assistance precisely in line with public objections to the program, did not make citizens more supportive of program spending, warmer toward program recipients, or more supportive of the party that forged the reform, the Democrats (Reference Soss and SchramSoss and Schram 2007). Lack of proximity may explain the reform’s failure to induce attitudinal change: Many people do not participate in cash welfare or know someone who does.

Privatized policies may also hide the government’s role, shaping attitudinal feedbacks. Across European countries, there is less support for government spending on health care where health care is more privatized (Reference Zhu and LipsmeyerZhu and Lipsmeyer 2015). At the same time, in countries where health care is privately financed and where individuals must weigh different public or private alternatives, their personal experience matters more for their attitudes toward government; but where health care is entirely public and universal, personal experiences are divorced from perceptions of the role of government (Reference LarsenLarsen 2020).

“Interpretive” or Citizenship Messages. Reference PiersonPaul Pierson (1993) argued that policies could influence mass behaviors and attitudes not only through the resources they confer but also with the “interpretive” messages they send. Many analysts have pointed to such messages – which tell individuals how important or worthy they are in the view of the state – as the apparent mechanism linking policy designs with attitudinal outcomes, even though the data necessary to test for such mechanisms is rarely available in extant studies.

In the United States, welfare case workers’ arbitrary and capricious powers over benefits send messages to the recipients that they are unworthy, diminishing their political efficacy and leading them to view the entire government as arbitrary (Reference SossSoss 1999), while recipients of the universal Social Security program have higher efficacy than other citizens (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003). Similarly, Swedish citizens in universal programs that treat clients as empowered “customers” express greater trust in politicians, more support for increased social spending, more leftward ideological placements, and greater interpersonal trust than those experiencing income-targeted “client” programs (Reference KumlinKumlin 2004; Kumlin and Rothstein 2005). In the UK, making receipt of cash assistance conditional on working, and then monitoring recipients’ compliance, sends the even harsher message that government does not trust recipients (Reference WatsonWatson 2015).

Policies beyond the social welfare arena send interpretive messages too. An analysis combining survey data with the size and racial composition of jail inmate populations at the county level in the United States finds that, where criminal justice enforcement is more racially skewed, highly educated Black respondents are less likely to say government is responsive, have less trust in government, and become less participatory. At the same time, white respondents in areas with large Black populations and racially skewed enforcement exhibit higher trust, political interest, and nonelectoral participation. Criminal justice disparities apparently signal to Blacks that government is targeting them while signaling to whites that government is “looking out for them” (Reference MaltbyMaltby 2017: 544).

Elite Framing and Priming; Media and Party Effects. The ways in which political elites such as elected politicians and bureaucrats talk about programs and clienteles – and the considerations they prime in citizens’ minds – may affect attitudes as well. European analysts argue that existing policy regimes serve as channels of socialization and elite framing, with extant policies defining the national “moral economy,” a macro-level interpretive feedback that affects what publics support (Reference LindhLindh 2015; see also Reference MauMau 2003, Reference Mau2004; Reference SvallforsSvallfors 1997, Reference Svallfors2006, Reference Svallfors2007, Reference Svallfors2010). In the United States, studies show that citizens have certain racialized policy images in their heads, with universal programs like Social Security coded as “white” and cash welfare and many other means-tested programs coded as “Black,” in part because of elite framings (Reference WinterWinter 2006) and media portrayals (Reference GilensGilens 1999) that overrepresent those racial groups. The media may also increase the visibility of policies, increasing awareness and policy effects on attitudes above and beyond any resource effects, as studies of education reform in China (Reference LuLu 2014) and water privatization in Argentina (Reference Di Tella, Galiani and SchargrodskyDi Tella, Galiani, and Schargrodsky 2012) show.

The effects of policies on attitudes may also depend on the messenger. Reference LindhLindh (2015) finds that class differences in support for market models of welfare distribution are greater where there is more public delivery (in Nordic countries) and smaller where there is more private delivery (in Anglo-Saxon countries and Japan). The difference seems driven by the presence of unions and parties in the Nordic states, whose rhetoric emphasizes class-based politics, while such collective organizations and therefore class-based rhetoric are more muted in the other contexts.

3.3.2 Attitudinal Outcomes

Policy feedback scholars have examined a variety of attitudinal outcomes ranging from policy effects on attitudes toward programs and their recipients, toward the incumbent government that delivered the policy, or toward government in general (or toward market-based provision). Some of these effects are self-reinforcing, strengthening political support for subsequent rounds of policymaking, while some are self-undermining, undercutting support and leading to negative policy spirals. The discussion in Section 3.3.1 of factors in attitudes mentioned some attitudinal outcomes along the way; here, we cite additional studies on outcomes.

Program Support; Reinforcing and Thermostatic Effects. Policies may generate their own support, with attitudes toward programs becoming more favorable among those who benefit, as several studies of the Affordable Care Act have shown (Reference Hopkins and ParishHopkins and Parish 2019). Individuals receiving benefits from the relatively new Chinese welfare state become more likely to see the government rather than individuals as responsible for citizen well-being (Reference Im and MengIm and Meng 2016). Conversely, government spending can elicit a “thermostatic” effect, with the public responding to increased spending with preferences for cutting spending or responding to a reduction in spending with preferences for more government activity, as studies of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada demonstrate (Reference Erikson, MacKuen and StimsonErikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002; Reference Soroka and WlezienSoroka and Wlezien 2004, Reference Soroka and Wlezien2010; Reference StimsonStimson 2004; Reference WlezienWlezien 1995). Thermostatic effects are stronger on issues of high salience and in unitary (rather than federal) systems and stronger for some issues in presidential rather than parliamentary systems (Reference Soroka and WlezienSoroka and Wlezien 2010).

Attitudes toward Program Recipients. Policies may also alter views about societal groups that ordinarily arise from preadult socialization or group orientations, with policies and their designs sending messages to other members of the public about the perceived worth and deservingness of public policy clienteles (Reference Schneider and IngramSchneider and Ingram 1993). In the United States, Reference BellBell’s (2020) survey experiment finds that support for tuition-free college is higher when a minimum high school grade point average is included as a requirement, apparently boosting the perceived deservingness of recipients. Also, in that country, Social Security Disability Insurance recipients, even though they are recipients of a contributory, earned social insurance program, are deemed as less deserving by experimental subjects when they are portrayed in vignettes as suffering from “harder-to-diagnose impairments” such as mood disorders (Reference Fang and HuberFang and Huber 2020).

Attitudes toward Incumbent Governments. Public policies may affect attitudes toward the government that produced the policy in question, as when satisfaction with the incumbent Danish government fell after education grant cuts were announced in the middle of the European Social Survey (Reference LarsenLarsen 2018). Conversely, support for government can rise with a policy intervention: Using survey data collected immediately before and after COVID-19 lockdowns were implemented in European countries in spring 2020, Reference Bol, Marco, Blais and LoewenBol and colleagues (2021) find that lockdowns increased satisfaction with democracy and vote intentions for the party of the incumbent prime minister or president. A causal study of a temporary anti-poverty cash transfer program in Uruguay found higher government support among recipients than among a control group, with the effect persisting after the program ended (Reference Manacorda, Miguel and VigoritoManacorda et al. 2011).

Trust in Government. The COVID-19 lockdowns that Reference Bol, Marco, Blais and LoewenBol and colleagues (2021) examined also increased trust in government. Across European countries, trust in government is greater where welfare spending is higher (Reference ShoreShore 2019). Reference Li and WuLi and Wu’s (2018) causal model shows that the rollout of a new rural pension scheme in China increased trust in both local and central government. In the reverse direction, negative policy experiences can undermine trust, as Reference MaltbyMaltby’s (2017) study of racial disparities in US criminal justice enforcement showed for Black respondents.

Issue Ownership. Related to incumbent support, policy feedbacks might affect “issue ownership,” citizens’ perceptions about which political parties are best at handling which issues (Reference PetrocikPetrocik 1996). A study examining forty-six issues across seventeen rich democracies (including many European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) found that issue ownership is quite stable, with right-of-center parties having ownership over public finance, law and order, immigration, and international affairs issues and left-of-center parties having ownership over the welfare state and the environment (Reference SeebergSeeberg 2017). One question is whether the implementation of new policies can shake up these patterns. An examination of a major Medicare reform in the United States suggests that the answer is no: Although majorities of panel survey respondents knew that Republicans had designed the popular new prescription drug benefit and had controlled government at the time of passage, that knowledge did not make them more likely to say that Republicans would do a better job managing entitlements or conducting health policy in the future (Reference CampbellMorgan and Campbell 2011). Issue ownership resembles attitudes toward program recipients in its stickiness: The images in people’s heads about political parties and about program recipients have proven largely impervious to policy feedbacks. Partisan shifts in vote share or party identification due to policy are typically ephemeral (Reference Galvin and ThurstonGalvin and Thurston 2018).

Beliefs about Markets. With many rich democracies introducing privatized elements into public policy, attitudes not just about government but about the role of markets could be affected. Cross-sectional analysis of support for the market distribution of social services shows greater support in advanced democracies with more private spending, suggesting “the operation of normative feedback effects flowing from existing welfare policy arrangements” (Reference LindhLindh 2015; see also Reference Di Tella, Galiani and SchargrodskyDi Tella, Galiani, and Schargrodsky 2012). The proposed mechanism is the message sent by existing policy: “A market-based social service system might nourish beliefs that social services are ‘normal’ commodities suitable for market distribution, while a system of public provision might encourage the conception that services constitute social rights that are to be provided independent of market logic” (Reference LindhLindh 2015: 893). Cross-sectional, regime-wide analyses cannot combat the alternative hypothesis that some countries have more private spending because public opinion was more supportive of market-oriented policy to begin with. But an analysis of surveys conducted before and after the 2003 market-model Medicare reform in the United States found that senior citizens getting prescription drugs from private insurance companies became no more likely to support the reform or other market-model reforms like Social Security privatization than seniors with only traditional, government-only Medicare (Reference CampbellMorgan and Campbell 2011).

Norms. Other policy changes have been found to create new norms. Longitudinal studies show that individuals became more supportive of smoking bans after their adoption in France, Germany, and the Netherlands (Reference Mons, Nagelhout and GuignardMons et al. 2012) and became more likely to view secondhand smoke as harmful and to view smokers with disdain in the United States (Reference PachecoPacheco 2013). In the United States, after the Iowa Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage, apparently sending messages from elites about what is socially acceptable, support for same-sex marriage increased (Reference Kreitzer, Hamilton and TolbertKreitzer, Hamilton, and Tolbert 2014). The increase in the availability of public childcare in Norway increased mothers’ likelihood of saying public childcare is best (Reference Ellingsaeter, Kitterod and LyngstadEllingsaeter, Kitterod, and Lyngstad 2017).

4.3.1 Increasing Returns

One of the most cited policy feedback mechanisms draws on Paul Pierson’s argument about increasing returns. Based on arguments in institutional economics developed by Reference ArthurBrian Arthur (1989) and others, increasing returns to choices made early in the policy development process (“critical junctures”) mean that “the relative benefits of the current activity compared with other possible options increase over time [and] the costs of exit – of switching to some previously plausible alternative – rise” (Reference PiersonPierson 2000a: 252). This happens through one or more barriers to policy change:

1. (1) large setup costs that would require major new investments to change (e.g., shifting from driving on the right-hand side of the road to the left);

2. (2) learning effects as people and businesses get higher returns from gaining skill in operating in accordance with a new policy;

3. (3) coordination effects as returns increase from operating in a consistent manner (e.g., all motor vehicles driving on the same side of the road). As Pierson notes, this is consistent with the notion of “institutional complementarities” developed by Reference Hall and SoskiceHall and Soskice (2001) to explain continuing differences between – and stability within – models of liberal and coordinated market economies;

4. (4) adaptive expectations as individuals change their behavior to respond to revised policy even if they were originally opposed to it and continue to suffer losses from it, because they need to make investments to operate consistently with current policy (Reference PiersonPierson 2000a: 254).

An important implication of this argument is that policies become more difficult to reverse the more “mature” they are – that is, the longer they have been in place and affected constituencies have adapted their expectations and investments to those policies. More generally, while Pierson uses the term “lock-in” to describe these processes of path dependence, especially in his earlier work, this does not mean that he viewed programmatic choices as immutable but rather as costly to reverse; the logic of increasing returns is that, even when institutional barriers to policy reversal are minimal, the collective gains from policy stability make policy reversals (and repeated policy gyrations as governing parties with different ideologies and policy priorities move into and out of office) relatively rare.

While the increasing returns causal mechanism relates primarily to the economic calculations of various societal actors, political factors also play an important role. Reference PiersonPierson (2000b) argues that the short time horizons of politicians make them less concerned about the long-term efficacy of policies. In addition, political institutions that may impose multiple veto points and supermajority requirements for policy change inhibit later policy shifts. Recognizing the importance of policy stability for encouraging investment around an initially controversial policy or institutional choice, governments may even develop mechanisms to demonstrate a “credible commitment” that a policy will not be reversed.

The centrality of increasing returns arguments in the policy feedback literature on policy change raises important questions about their limitations, however. Are all public policies subject to increasing returns or do some policies provide static or diminishing returns over time? Urban highway construction that simply results in more traffic, more pollution, and neighborhood disruption as well as mass incarceration as a means of crime control (Reference Dagan and TelesDagan and Teles 2014, Reference Dagan and Teles2016) are among the policy sectors where research suggests that diminishing returns – not just to achieving policy objectives but also to building political constituencies – may occur. Moreover, transitioning away from some policies may have relatively low economic costs, especially when doing so involves eliminating a policy that has visible costs and does not require heavy investment in new physical or administrative infrastructure – elimination of the one-child policy in China, for example. In addition, whether policies are enacted during good or bad economic times may affect their durability: Enactment during economic downturn may weaken investments in a policy by potential supporters and thus lower the transition costs of abandoning it (Reference Karch and RoseKarch and Rose 2019: 26–27).

4.3.2 Social-Political Mechanisms

A variety of social-political policy feedback mechanisms are discussed in the literature, and these mechanisms are often discussed in conjunction with ideational and other mechanisms as jointly causing feedback effects. In the discussion here, we will focus on mechanisms that assert an important role for the power of concentrated constituencies – and especially power asymmetries between constituencies – as well as mass political beliefs and political institutions.

Constituency Resources and Power. One of the most powerful mechanisms favoring self-reinforcing policy effects concerns the role of organized constituencies: Established policies are likely to foster the growth of supportive constituencies, especially by groups that are “rent-seekers” – those that are trying to extract resources for themselves from the rest of society. Indeed, the “constituency power” feedback mechanism is building on the increasing returns mechanism by focusing on the distributive consequences of increasing returns. Constituency groups are frequently better organized to protect their interests than the public, especially when that policy provides concentrated benefits to key constituencies of the policy. Equally important, policies may channel political, economic, and ideational resources to those groups that they can use in later conflicts over the policy. In countries that have adopted import substitution industrialization policies, for example, both industries and workers employed by those industries are likely to derive benefits from tariffs and from other restrictions on imports. In many policy sectors, such as pensions, people feel that they have earned a right to the benefits that they receive, especially if they have contributed to them through payroll taxes. The flow of concentrated benefits to a constituency over time reinforces a sense of entitlement and strengthens organizations capable of defending that benefit stream when it is threatened. Reference PiersonPierson (1994) argued that, in wealthy democracies, these constituency effects have supplanted support from labor unions and political parties on the left as the dominant protectors of welfare state programs from cutbacks when fiscal constraints are strong. Self-reinforcing constituency policy feedback may also lead to program expansion when there are no politically powerful opposing interests and fiscal constraints are relatively weak.

The power of constituency groups to produce self-reinforcing feedbacks is also influenced by that program’s political opportunity structure: “specific configurations of resources, institutional arrangements and historical precedents for social mobilization” (Reference KitscheltKitschelt 1986: 58) of specific latent or already organized constituencies. These opportunity structures may affect both a constituency’s ability to influence the formulation of policy choices and the implementation of those choices. In some cases, opportunity structure is partially endogenous to the policy, since specialized structures may be established as part of the policy that grant some constituencies privileged access both to the policy and to its implementation, while excluding other constituencies.

The discussion in this section makes clear that the power of constituency groups to take advantage of and build on self-reinforcing policy feedback is conditional rather than absolute. Several scholars, writing about the United States, argue that specific programmatic features may either strengthen or weaken the constituency benefits and resources feedback mechanism. On the one hand, several scholars have noted that gaps in coverage in the Medicare program for the elderly offered an opportunity for AARP, the largest advocacy organization for the elderly in the United States, to attract members by offering insurance policies to address those gaps. On the other hand, Reference CampbellAndrea Campbell (2011) has discussed what she calls the demobilizing effects of “half solutions”: If a policy adopted offers a partial solution to a problem, the very existence of “a” solution, even if not an optimal solution, may undermine broad constituency mobilization for a better or a more comprehensive solution. The US health care sector offers many examples of this phenomenon. Creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs in the United States, for example, addressed – albeit very incompletely – coverage for two of the groups that are hardest to serve through market solutions, the elderly and the poor. This undermined the potential for mobilization for a program with universal or quasi-universal coverage (Reference CampbellCampbell 2011; Reference HackerHacker 1998; Reference Morgan and CampbellMorgan and Campbell 2011).

In recent years, research has pointed to several conditions under which alignments of constituency power may produce limiting and even self-undermining feedback effects as well as self-reinforcing ones. Reference Patashnik and ZelizerPatashnik and Zelizer (2013) have noted that coalitions that support a policy change may disintegrate after their favored policy is enacted and supporters stop investing in it. Policies may also turn out to have more beneficial elements for some parts of the initial support coalition than for others, causing the latter to withdraw or waiver in their support. As a result, long-term policy resilience depends on “whether a reform sustains the coalitions that brought it about or causes new coalitions to emerge after enactment” (Reference Patashnik and ZelizerPatashnik and Zelizer 2013: 1074; see also Reference Karch and RoseKarch and Rose 2017). Reference SinhaAseema Sinha (2019: 58) sees just such a process as critical to the heavily contested economic reforms in India after 1991, arguing that, while the reforms encountered opposition from business, farmer, and labor interests, and substantial reversals, “what sustained this shift was the disruption of old coalitions, and the creation of new supporters and their role in consolidating the reform program despite opposition.”

Several factors can strengthen or weaken self-reinforcing constituency resources and benefits. Several authors (see, e.g., Reference Berry, Burden and HowellBerry, Burden, and Howell 2010; Reference CampbellCampbell 2012; Reference Karch and RoseKarch and Rose 2017) have noted that timing matters: Programs enacted just before a shift in party control of government not only may fail to gain from increasing returns but also may fail to benefit from a growing sense among the constituency of entitlement to benefits and (potentially) a flow of resources over time.

Other conditions may lead to more clearly self-undermining policy effects. A perception of concentrated losses by some constituencies is likely to lead to the development or strengthening of constituencies seeking policy change and/or to the fragmentation of existing support coalitions. Reference Jacobs and WeaverJacobs and Weaver (2015) argue that a constituency-based mechanism for self-undermining feedbacks could develop even for powerful interests if the constituency accepted a policy at t₁ that offered short-term benefits but imposed long-term costs, or if unanticipated losses result from compromises made during the process of policy adoption. The layering and interaction of multiple policies over time that were difficult to predict in advance could also lead to self-undermining constituency feedbacks. Reference StokesLeah Stokes (2020: 5), in discussing the reversal of several US state initiatives to promote clean energy under pressure from fossil fuel interests, similarly notes that the nature and severity of “policies’ potential outcomes are hard to predict, particularly with innovative laws that have not been trialed extensively in other jurisdictions.” Highly complex, multicomponent legislation also contributes to what Stokes calls “the fog of enactment.” As those new policies are implemented, “actors learn, they update their beliefs and come to attack policies they previously ignored or underestimated” (Reference StokesStokes 2020: 4). They may invest more resources in political action and, in the United States and other systems of multilevel governance, build networks that cross jurisdictional boundaries to improve their information, update preferences, and learn what strategies are effective in recouping past policy losses (Reference StokesStokes 2020: chap. 2; see also Reference Hertel-FernandezHertel-Fernandez 2019).

Several other endogenous and exogenous factors are also likely to contribute to self-undermining effects that may lead to policy change. If concentrated policy costs emerge quickly after enactment of policy reform, for example, constituency groups that perceive themselves as losers will have invested less in adaptation and will be more likely to resist. Moreover, constituency political leverage may be uneven over time and increase with a change in party control of government; thus, groups might fight to reverse a policy change enacted by a hostile prior government if they feel that they now have the power to do so (Reference StokesStokes 2020: chap. 2). And if the constituency is already highly organized and strongly united in support of benefits under the status quo ante, they may be willing to refight a battle previously lost. Finally, if the constituency believes that key provisions of a policy are vulnerable to a legal challenge or to another challenge that can be mounted at a reasonable cost in a different venue than where the change at t₁ was originally enacted, they may also be more willing to challenge it (Reference StokesStokes 2020: chap. 2).

Constituency pressures may also be complex and cross-cutting as well as unidirectional. The politically popular Medicare program for the elderly and disabled in the United States, for example, has largely avoided highly visible cutbacks to benefits for its core beneficiary groups, but initiatives to expand its coverage to a broader swath of the US population have faced strong opposition from health insurance companies, whose customer base it would take away. Thus, it has not provided a pathway to universal or quasi-universal coverage, as some of its supporters had hoped.

Mass Attitudes. If the constituency power feedback mechanism focuses on benefits and costs that are felt in a concentrated fashion by specific groups, the mass attitudes mechanism focuses on the perceptions of the broader public. But it also focuses on partisan elites, the media, and (increasingly) social media, who frame and prime public perceptions. If a policy provides widespread benefits, and those clients are perceived as deserving – or perhaps, more importantly, as not undeserving – then that program is likely to be of relatively low salience to the mass public. It is therefore not likely to undergo significant challenge and may perhaps also enjoy incremental growth if it also has a supportive core constituency. Indeed, low levels of partisan attachment among the electorate and polarization among party elites “could ensure a policy’s survival irrespective of a party’s immediate electoral fortunes and eventually provide a political foundation for future program growth” (Reference Hacker and PiersonHacker and Pierson 2019: 14). Reference Mettler, SoRelle, Sabatier and WeibleMettler and SoRelle (2018: 104) take the argument one step further, arguing that policies may build devoted electoral constituencies for the parties that enacted them, “thus turning those parties into devoted defenders” and helping both the parties and the policies to stay in place. Reference Galvin and ThurstonGalvin and Thurston (2017: 334), on the other hand, claim that “the intellectual basis for thinking that policies are good vehicles for building electoral majorities – or good substitutes for the more tedious work of organizational party-building – is quite thin” and that “policies do not always, or even very often, generate their own political supports … [and] even when they do, there is little reason to think they will cement partisan loyalties.” Reference Hacker and PiersonHacker and Pierson (2019: 20) also argue that, at least for the United States in the current era of high polarization and low trust in government, “relying on public opinion to institutionalize a new program is unlikely to be a sufficient strategy in most domains.”

Self-reinforcing politics through the mass politics mechanism can be challenged in several ways, notably by high salience focusing events that trigger program failures and undermine confidence in a program. Even in the absence of such focusing events, engagement by high-profile political and opinion leaders who have electoral incentives to frame a program as loss-imposing or flawed, or the constituency served by the program as undeserving, can undermine mass public support for a program. Moreover, the fact that political knowledge levels are low, and politics and policy are a sideshow for many citizens, gives elites lots of leeway for framing effects. A prominent example is the efforts of Republican leaders seeking to repeal the ACA (Reference WeaverWeaver 2018). Such efforts are likely to be particularly common in periods of high partisan and ideological polarization, when political leaders may oppose policies to “differentiate themselves from their partisan opposition” (Reference LeeLee 2009: 3; see also Reference PatashnikPatashnik 2019).

This self-undermining feedback mechanism also has inbuilt limitations, however: Reference DownsDowns’ (1972) issue attention cycle suggests that public attention to an issue that does not have high innate salience will fade over time, as other issues capture the public’s attention. Moreover, repeated failure of reform efforts may discourage leaders of countermobilizations from further investment in policy reform initiatives or at least they may become much more modest in their objectives.

4.3.3 Information, Attention, and Interpretation Mechanisms

While economic impacts and constituency power are important mechanisms for policy feedback, information – and how that information is interpreted and weighted – also plays a critical role in policy feedback. These mechanisms are of several types.

Information Mechanisms. Perhaps the most common-sense meaning of policy feedback is that policymakers, policy experts, and policy entrepreneurs inside and outside of government receive information about the efficacy and impacts of current government policies and programs and then consider policy revisions based on that information about its effects. This is the meaning stressed by Reference KingdonJohn Kingdon (1984) in his classic study of agenda-setting in the United States. Kingdon notes that this policy information comes in many forms and from multiple sources, each of which has its own potential for biases and imperfections. Sources of information include formal government reports, media and social media coverage, and inputs from citizens, interest groups, and policy evaluators. Of course, the type of information received, and the “spin” built into it, depends on factors such as how free the media and social media are and the resources that different interests must devote to conveying their preferred interpretation. This type of information can be used at any stage of the policymaking process but is likely to be especially important in agenda-setting, as governments decide which issues to address.

Elite Attention. A distinct but overlapping causal mechanism for policy feedback can be found in the PE intellectual tradition. In this approach, a key factor that constrains the range of issues that can get on a government’s agenda is limitations on the capacity of political elites to pay attention to many issues simultaneously (see, e.g., Reference Baumgartner and JonesBaumgartner and Jones 1993/2009; Reference Baumgartner, Jones, Mortensen, Weible and SabatierBaumgartner, Jones, and Mortensen 2018; Reference PrincenPrincen 2013). In addition, constituencies that benefit from the policy seek to develop “policy monopolies” that exclude outside voices from policy influence. Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (see, e.g., Reference Jenkins-Smith, Nohrstedt, Weible, Ingold, Weible and SabatierJenkins-Smith et al. 2018), this approach also emphasizes the role of intellectual paradigms or policy ideas that are likely to reinforce the status quo and limit consideration of alternatives. While these stabilizing forces are occasionally subject to challenges and disruption, the general tendency is to return to the dominance of the policy status quo ante. As noted in Section 4.3.2, if policies are already in place that offer “half solutions” – imperfect solutions that nevertheless offer some response to a problem or problems – elites are likely to devote their limited attention to more immediately pressing problems (Reference CampbellCampbell 2011).

Policy monopolies and dominant interpretive frameworks are not impervious to more serious challenges, however. Reference Jones and BaumgartnerJones and Baumgartner (2005: 171) have noted that “the U.S. political system produces extreme allegiance to the status quo; interspersed with occasional frantic overreactions.” Increased elite attention, and openness to alternative interpretive frameworks, is most likely when external shocks increase salience of the issue among the public and mobilize groups outside of the dominant policy coalition. Long periods of policy stability and major policy punctuations are thus seen as two sides of the same causal coin: “Radical shifts occur because some issues and negative consequences of existing policies are ignored in periods of policy stability. And policy change will be more radical to the extent that issues and problems have been ignored for a longer time” (Reference PrincenPrincen 2013: 855). Recent PE research has given increased attention to what PE theorists label “error accumulation” and how institutional arrangements may encourage or discourage efficient information processing (Reference Chan and ZhaoChan and Zhao 2016; Reference Lam and ChanLam and Chan 2015). Exogenous factors, notably weak institutional insulation of sectoral policymaking and the availability of alternative decision-making venues that have a legitimate claim to jurisdiction over the policy, increase the likelihood that a policy “punctuation” may occur. On the other hand, one study found that European Union policy change was less punctuated than in the United States because the “EU’s legislative process is more isolated from public opinion than that in the US” (see the discussion in Reference PrincenPrincen 2013: 863), making it less susceptible to swings in public opinion.

Social Construction. In addition to the resources and political leverage of constituency groups, Reference Schneider and IngramSchneider and Ingram (1993, Reference Schneider, Ingram, Schneider and Ingram2005) have emphasized that the “social construction” of constituency groups is likely to influence their opportunities to both enact and maintain or expand policies that favor their interests. If program constituencies are “negatively constructed” in political discourse as “undeserving” of policies that provide benefits to them, those programs are more likely to experience pressures for retrenchment or even abolition. Schneider and Ingram point out that these social constructions are partially endogenous to policies; they may both reflect and reinforce how particular target populations are viewed. As noted in the previous section, benefits for military veterans and the aged in the United States both reflect societal perceptions that they are deserving of government aid and give them increased resources to ensure a continuing flow of benefits (Reference CampbellCampbell 2003; Reference MettlerMettler 2005). Yet these self-reinforcing effects are by no means absolute. When programs gain a reputation as inefficient, corrupt, or patronage-ridden, as with Civil War veterans’ pensions in the United States, they can undermine the positive social construction of both the program and its clientele (Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1992). Program characteristics can reinforce these social constructions and hence self-reinforcing effects; thus, social insurance programs (e.g., Social Security in the United States and public pension programs in many other countries) benefit in their social construction from being financed in whole or in part from employer and/or employee contributions, even when benefits received are disproportionate to contributions.

Negative constructions can also be created by public policies; Reference Schneider, Ingram, Schneider and IngramSchneider and Ingram (2005: 5) argue, for example, that policy “can create categories – such as drunk drivers – which without the force of law would not have existed or at least would not have born any real stigma.” Conscious or unconscious public associations between stigmatized groups such as racial minorities can lead to self-undermining effects for programs associated with those groups, as Reference GilensMartin Gilens (1999) argued in Why Americans Hate Welfare. This is especially so when specific programs are identified with negative stereotypes of those groups’ behavior (e.g., laziness). And when both resource and social construction effects reinforce each other, the consequences for marginalized populations can be severe. This is particularly evident, Reference Weaver and GellerVesla Weaver and Amanda Geller (2019: 191) argue, in “contemporary policing practices and crime control policies [that] have tended to deter engagement, cement inequality, and confer adverse legal and political socialization [and] give rise to pitched asymmetries of power, emboldening groups who do not bear the direct adverse effects of policing and punishment and diminishing the power of those who do.”

Menu Contraction and Expansion. A closely related process to the sociopolitical policy feedback mechanisms concerns the “menu” of policy options that are actively considered as alternatives to the status quo. As policies become more “mature,” the political and budgetary transition costs of major policy shifts grow, and the potential set of alternatives is likely to shift to incremental program fixes.

A process of continuous self-reinforcement and menu-narrowing is not foreordained, however. If the policy status quo produces concentrated losers, for example, those groups have an incentive to bear the search costs of developing potential alternatives. If incremental policy “patches” have been implemented but fail to address perceived policy problems that are seen as serious rather than an acceptable “cost of doing business,” it may prompt a search for more transformative policy options or simply termination of the policy. And if multiple sources of policy expertise exist rather than expertise being concentrated in a narrow, cohesive, and self-protective policy elite, a more robust set of policy alternatives is likely to be generated (Reference Jacobs and WeaverJacobs and Weaver 2015). But whether that search succeeds in producing policy change depends in large part on whether viable plausible models for policy regime transition exist or can be created. Where they cannot, policy reform may make it to the policy agenda without resulting in formal policy change. In 2017, for example, the Trump administration’s efforts to “repeal and replace” (or simply repeal) the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act fell just short in large part because they could not agree on an alternative that would not result in twenty million or more Americans losing their health care coverage.

4.3.4 Fiscal Mechanisms

Fiscal feedback mechanisms that can affect future rounds of policymaking or implementation are of two basic types, relating to whether a program has an earmarked financing mechanism and to the potential for “crowding out” by existing spending commitments.

Earmarked Revenue Sources. The former relates primarily to whether a program has an earmarked financing source. Programs with a dedicated revenue stream that provides adequate funding for the foreseeable future and does not place demands on general revenues are likely to receive limited attention and concern by budget guardians (e.g., budget offices and treasury ministries) and may be less subject to competing budgetary pressures during periods of economic austerity. Hence the effects are usually self-reinforcing and occur primarily at the agenda-setting stage. Yet, as Reference PatashnikEric Patashnik (1997: 432) has noted, “collective promises may strengthen or weaken over time, but are nearly always subject to periodic renewal and renegotiation.” Moreover, even trust fund financed programs that are self-financing in the short and medium term are likely to raise strong concerns among budget guardians if program expenditures are large and growing rapidly. A difficult overall fiscal climate may also prompt efforts to “raid” trust funds (Reference Rabe and HamptonRabe and Hampton 2016).

Earmarked revenue sources may also have self-undermining feedback effects, moreover, in at least two distinct ways. First, if a program is financed only through earmarked revenues, with no general revenues permitted to be expended on the program, insufficient dedicated funding to meet program commitments may spark a “trust fund crisis” in which expenditures are automatically reduced unless policymakers intervene (Reference PiersonPierson 1994: 173–174). Such trust fund crises helped to prompt Social Security reform legislation in the United States in both 1977 and 1983 (Reference WeaverWeaver 1988; Reference BélandBéland 2005), as well as in the Medicare program (Reference OberlanderOberlander 2003: chap. 4). Program financing mechanisms may also lead to program cutbacks without a trust fund crisis: Some programs – notably in the public pension sector – contain automatic stabilizing mechanisms that reduce program commitments gradually based on projected (or sometimes current) budgetary, economic, and demographic trends. In public pension programs, for example, such mechanisms can lead to automatic benefit cuts or increases in the standard retirement age without intervention by policymakers – and if they can resist political incentives to intervene (Reference WeaverWeaver 2016). Recent assessments suggest that such automatic stabilizing mechanisms do have some effect in changing policy outputs and outcomes at t₂, but that where such mechanisms are poorly insulated from control by politicians, they are vulnerable to erosion or reversal (Reference WeaverWeaver 2016). Trust funds can also be subject to external shocks – for example, the growth in auto fuel efficiency standards and increase in use of electric vehicles can lead to declines in transportation trust funds funded by motor fuel taxation if the tax rates are not adjusted over time (Reference Perl and BurkePerl and Burke 2018).

Crowding Out. Even in the absence of a trust fund mechanism, fiscal conditions that are either program-specific or related to a country’s overall fiscal situation may affect later program decisions. Reference CampbellMorgan and Campbell (2011), for example, argue that rapid Medicare expenditure growth in the United States after 1965 both undermined the framers’ plans for an incremental path to universal health insurance and thwarted any push for the expansion of basic Medicare benefits package until addition of prescription drugs in the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. More generally, economic downturns and slower economic growth increase the pressure from budget guardians for expenditure reductions, and the heavy expenditure burden of entitlement program expenditures for the elderly may “crowd out” expenditures for new social risks and program initiatives for other vulnerable populations.

4.3.5 State Capacity and Administrative Mechanisms

Very few policies are completely self-implementing; most require some detailed procedures and usually an organizational apparatus to put them into effect. Thus, as Reference Moynihan and SossMoynihan and Soss (2014: 320) argue, “bureaucracies are not only creatures but also creators of the political forces that impinge on them,” and “administrative organizations are, in their own right, sites of politics.” But this is essentially to say that implementation is a political process (the left-hand side of Figure 3); it does not necessarily involve policy feedback in the sense of changes in policy choices, outputs, or outcomes at a later stage.

Recent research does suggest several types of state capacity and administrative feedback mechanisms with important implications for later polity stasis and change. A first type, which Reference PereraIsabel Perera (2021a, Reference Perera2021b) has labeled “supply-side policy feedbacks,” can be considered an extension of the “Constituency Resources and Power” mechanism outlined in Section 4.3.2, but with the providers of the policy rather than its recipients as the key constituencies. These providers may include both agency leadership and the “program operators” (Reference WilsonWilson 1991) who deliver the program, either directly through government agencies or through nongovernmental entities (e.g., private sector physicians, for-profit providers of government-guaranteed mortgages or student loans).

Supply-side feedbacks from administrators and providers do not always support policy and program expansion, however. Administering agencies may sometimes be hostile to a policy: Reference HaselswerdtJake Haselswerdt (2014: 753) argues that the greater susceptibility of older tax breaks to elimination than older spending programs in the United States may be due in part to weak administrative champions for the latter: “older spending programs are more likely to have a large, entrenched, and politically organized staff with relationships on Capitol Hill, but Treasury Department bureaucrats disdain tax expenditures of all ages.” Probably more typical is the situation described by Reference Morgan and CampbellMorgan and Campbell (2011): In a “delegated welfare state” with a strong role for private providers, those providers may provide additional allies for a policy’s creation and are unlikely to be actively hostile to a program, but they may be opposed to further expansion of a program if it they believe that doing so means losing autonomy in the way they operate or a less generous financing arrangement, as has historically been the case with physicians in the United States with the expansion of government-provided health insurance. How and how well providers are organized can also affect their ability to press for types of program expansions they favor and block program retrenchment or transformation that they oppose (Reference PereraPerera 2020, Reference Perera2021b). Having strong political leverage (e.g., teachers unions in off-cycle elections in the United States) can also mediate the strength of providers’ influence on subsequent policy (Reference AnziaAnzia 2011).

Policy-induced administrative feedback mechanisms can also take the form of a means/ends match or mismatch. When the agency administering a policy has a clear and achievable mandate, along with the financial resources, technical capacity, and an administrative structure that allow it to achieve policy goals, as well as an organizational mission that causes it to prioritize the policy, it is more likely to avoid visible policy failures that prompt the public and generalist policymakers to reassess the program and the agency’s management of it. The design of a policy also matters, notably the degree to which multiple policy “instruments, sequenced and assembled in ‘portfolios’ or ‘bundles’, work in concert to give effect to different aspects of a policy goal” (Reference Bali, Capano and RameshBali, Capano, and Ramesh 2019: 3). Of course, characteristics of the policy can make this more likely – for example, being a relatively simple set of tasks that are consistent with implementing agency skills and resources, and simple administrative arrangements requiring minimal cooperation of actors with conflicting goals. These conditions are likely to create self-reinforcing feedback effects. On the other hand, a means/ends mismatch is likely to involve a mismatch of agency mission and resources with program responsibilities, leading to visible failures that in turn damage the administering agency’s and program’s external reputation and political support. This is particularly true if those failures recur frequently and grow in visibility or appear to get worse.

Multilevel governance arrangements, notably federalism, can shape both “supply-side” policy feedbacks and policy match/mismatch feedbacks. Because federal arrangements and the policy dynamics they give rise to vary widely (Reference WeaverWeaver 2020), it is difficult to generalize about how multilevel governance interacts with feedback effects, but several effects are evident in the literature. Reference Karch and RoseKarch and Rose (2017), for example, argue that an alliance of state officials and business interests in the United States has been resistant to nationalizing eligibility and benefit levels in the Unemployment Insurance program created in 1935 because it gave states more control over the program and facilitated a “race to the bottom” favored by powerful business interests. More generally, a program structure that gives second-level governments discretion over important program provisions may lead to differences in those programs that reflect differences in ideology, party control, and fiscal capacity across those governmental units (Reference Fording and PattonFording and Patton 2020; Reference WeaverWeaver 2020). It may even lead to the growth of regional identities that shape future policy development (Reference Béland and LecoursBéland and Lecours 2020).