Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-kl2l2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-05T16:06:15.080Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Joe Soss
Joe Soss*
Affiliation:
American University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the links between welfare participation and broader forms of political involvement. Adopting a political learning perspective, I present evidence that policy designs structure clients' program experiences in ways that teach alternative lessons about the nature of government. Through their experiences under a given policy design, welfare clients develop program-specific beliefs about the wisdom and efficacy of asserting themselves. Because clients interpret their experiences with welfare bureaucracies as evidence of how government works more generally, beliefs about the welfare agency and client involvement become the basis for broader political orientations. I conclude that the views of government that citizens develop through program participation help explain broader patterns of political action and quiescence.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 93 , Issue 2 , June 1999 , pp. 363 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1999

Access options

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

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Books and Periodicals

Abramson, Paul R. 1983. Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Abramson, Paul R., and Claggett, William. 1992. “The Quality of Record Keeping and Racial Differences in Validated Turnout.” Journal of Politics 54 (3): 871–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, John H., and Nelson, Forrest D.. 1986. Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit Models. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz, Morton S.. 1962. “The Two Faces of Power.” American Political Science Review 56 (4): 947–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banfield, Edward C. 1974. The Unheavenly City Revisited. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Barber, Benjamin. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berg, Bruce L. 1998. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. 3d ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Gurin, Gerald, and Miller, Warren. 1954. The Voter Decides. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1967. Pluralist Democracy in the United States: Conflict and Consent. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Eagly, Alice H., and Chaiken, Shelly. 1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Easton, David. 1965. A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Easton, David. 1971. The Political System. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1977. Political Language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, , Gøsta, . 1990. Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fetterman, David M. 1979. Ethnography: Step by Step. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Fishbein, Martin, and Azjen, Icek. 1975. Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Gilder, George. 1981. Wealth and Poverty. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goodsell, Charles T. 1980. “Client Evaluations of Three Welfare Programs: A Comparison of Three Welfare Programs.” Administration & Society 12 (2): 123–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Linda. 1994. Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gurin, Gerald, and Gurin, Patricia. 1970. “Expectancy Theory in the Study of Poverty.” Journal of Social Issues 26 (2): 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handler, Joel F. 1992. “Discretion: Power, Quiescence, and Trust.” In The Uses of Discretion, ed. Hawkins, Keith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Pp. 331–60.Google Scholar
Handler, Joel F. 1996. Down from Bureaucracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handler, Joel F., and Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 1991. The Moral Construction of Poverty: Welfare Reform in America. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Handler, Joel F., and Hollingsworth, Jane. 1971. The “Deserving Poor”: A Study of Welfare Administration. Chicago: Markham.Google Scholar
Head Start Bureau. 1992. Head Start Program Performance Standards. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (45-CFR 1304).Google Scholar
Heclo, Hugh. 1994. “Poverty Politics.” In Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change, ed. Danziger, Sheldon, Sandefur, Gary, and Weinberg, Daniel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pp. 396–437.Google Scholar
Kane, Thomas J. 1987. “Giving Back Control: Long-Term Poverty and Motivation.” Social Service Review 61 (3): 405–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, Michael. 1989. The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O., and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Jerome, and Miller, Marc L.. 1986. Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, Michael. 1980. Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1964. “American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory.” World Politics 16 (4): 677–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luttbeg, Norman R. 1991. “Political Attitudes: A Historical Artifact or a Concept of Continuing Importance in Political Science?” In Political Science: Looking to the Future, ed. Crotty, William. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Pp. 13–30.Google Scholar
Marston, Sallie A. 1993. “Citizen Action Programs and Participatory Politics in Tucson.” In Public Policy for Democracy, ed. Ingram, Helen and Smith, Steven Rathgeb. Washington, DC: Brookings. Pp. 119–62.Google Scholar
McMiller, Darryl. 1995. “The Effects of Economic Circumstances and Attitudes on Blacks' Political Attitudes and Participation.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.Google Scholar
Mead, Lawrence M. 1992. The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mead, Lawrence, ed. 1997. The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty. Washington, DC: Brookings.Google Scholar
Miles, Matthew, and Huberman, Michael. 1984. Qualitative Data Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. 1969. Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Niemi, Richard, Craig, Stephen, and Mattei, Franco. 1991. “Measuring Internal Political Efficacy in the 1988 National Election Study.” American Political Science Review 85 (December: 1407–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1993. “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change.” World Politics 45 (4): 595–628.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piven, Frances Fox, and Cloward, Richard A.. 1971. Regulating the Poor. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Piven, Frances Fox, and Cloward, Richard A.. 1979. Poor People's Movements. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, Steven J., and Hansen, John Mark. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sapiro, Virginia. 1994. “Political Socialization During Adulthood: Clarifying the Political Time of Our Lives.” Research in Micropolitics 4: 197–223.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin. 1990. “‘The Law Is All Over’: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 2 (2): 343–79.Google Scholar
Schneider, Anne, and Ingram, Helen. 1993. “Social Construction of Target Populations.” American Political Science Review 87 (June: 334–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Anne, and Ingram, Helen. 1995. “Response.” American Political Science Review 89 (June: 441–6.Google Scholar
Schneider, Anne, and Ingram, Helen. 1997. Policy Design for Democracy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Silver, Brian D., Anderson, Barbara, and Abramson, Paul R.. 1986. “Who Overreports Voting?” American Political Science Review 80 (June: 613–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Steven Rathgeb, and Ingram, Helen. 1993. “Public Policy and Democracy.” In Public Policy for Democracy, ed. Ingram, Helen and Smith, Steven Rathgeb. Washington, DC: Brookings. Pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
Spradley, James P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Strauss, Anselm. 1987. Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, John C., Hogg, Michael A., Oakes, Penelope J., Reicher, S. D., and Wetherell, Margaret S.. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives. Committee on Ways and Means. 1998. The Green Book. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, and Nie, Norman. 1972. Participation in America. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Brady, Henry E.. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, James Q. 1980. “The Politics of Regulation.” In The Politics of Regulation, ed. Wilson, J. Q.. New York: Basic Books. Pp. 357–94.Google Scholar
Yin, Robert K. 1989. Case Study Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Young, Rosalie. 1995. “Subsidized Legal Service Applicants: Perceptions of Legal and Political Issues.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Toronto, Canada.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E., Kinder, Donald R., Rosenstone, Steven J., and the National Election Studies. 1993. American National Elections Study, 1992: Pre- and Post-Election Survey (Study #6067). Conducted by University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producers], 1993. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 1993.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.