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17. Other characteristics of drift include realistic formal revisions and alternatives are purposefully not adopted; the policy's effects are relatively sensitive to changes in context; the policy does not automatically update to keep pace with changing circumstances; opponents have the wherewithal to impede implementation or block formal revision; empirical implications of change are measurable; and the timeframe of analysis is reasonable. Beland et al., “Reassessing Policy Drift”; Rocco and Thurston, “From Metaphors to Measures”; Hacker, “Policy Drift.” For the purposes of theory building, core conceptual properties are distinguished from characteristics that are more methodological in nature.

18. Hacker and Pierson, “After the ‘Master Theory.’”

19. Mettler, “The Policyscape,” 371.

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34. This section draws upon Galvin, Daniel J., “From Labor Law to Employment Law: The Changing Politics of Workers’ Rights,” Studies in American Political Development 33, no. 1 (2019): 50–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Major revision attempts include the Labor Law Reform Act of 1978 and the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009. In 1992 and 1994, reform bills were killed via the Senate filibuster despite achieving majority support in both houses of Congress.

36. Core features include the right to free association, self-organization, collective bargaining, and concerted action; the law's commitment to firm-level bargaining (the “employer-employee dyad”); its requirement that the union with majority support in a single bargaining unit serves as the “exclusive representative” of all workers in the same unit; its centralized regulatory structure and certification authority; the “mutual obligation” of employers and employees’ representatives to bargain; its negligible penalties for employer interference in union elections; and its non-universal coverage (e.g., exclusion of farmworkers).

37. For proposals of what a labor law overhaul might look like, see the Clean Slate Project of Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program, Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs, “Clean Slate Update,” OnLabor.org, December 12, 2018, https://onlabor.org/clean-slate-update/.

38. Bernhardt, Annette D., Boushey, Heather, Dresser, Laura, and Tilly, Chris, eds., The Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America's Labor Market (Champaign, IL: Labor and Employment Relations Association, 2008)Google Scholar; Kalleberg, Arne L., Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011)Google Scholar; Galvin, “Deterring Wage Theft”; Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, “American Employers as Political Machines,” The Journal of Politics 79 (2017): 105–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

39. San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236 (1959); Lodge 76, International Ass'n of Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, 427 U.S. 132 (1976). See Estlund, Cynthia L, “The Ossification of American Labor Law,” Columbia Law Review (2002): 1527–612CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sachs, Benjamin I., “Despite Preemption: Making Labor Law in Cities and States,” Harvard Law Review (2011): 1153–224Google Scholar; Andrias, Kate, “The New Labor Law,” Yale Law Journal 126 (2016): 2–101Google Scholar.

40. Galvin, “From Labor Law to Employment Law.”

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46. Fine, Worker Centers; Fine et al., No One Size Fits All; Milkman and Ott, New Labor in New York.

47. Section 7 of the NLRA covers “the right … to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–69.

48. Fine, Janice, “Community Unions and the Revival of the American Labor Movement,” Politics & Society 33 (2005): 153–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fine, Worker Centers; Galvin, “Deterring Wage Theft”; Galvin, “From Labor Law to Employment Law.”

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53. See, e.g., Meyerson, “The Seeds of a New Labor Movement.”

54. Shayna Strom, “Organizing's Business Model Problem,” The Century Foundation, October 26, 2016, https://tcf.org/content/report/organizings-business-model-problem/; Fine et al., No One Size Fits All.

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56. JHacker, acob S., The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019)Google Scholar, chap. 6.

57. Squires, David and Anderson, Chloe, “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective: Spending, Use of Services, Prices, and Health in 13 Countries,” The Commonwealth Fund 15 (2015): 1–16Google ScholarPubMed; Institute of Medicine, U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

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60. Kaiser Family Foundation, “2017 Employer Health Benefits Survey,” sec. 2, September 19, 2017, https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2017-employer-health-benefits-survey/.

61. Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, chap. 5.

62. Starr, Remedy and Reaction; Brill, Steven, America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Health System (New York: Random House, 2015)Google Scholar. Decades earlier, Hawaii had come close with an employer mandate built upon its distinctive labor market, an arrangement given special status under federal law.

63. Hacker, Jacob S, “The Road to Somewhere: Why Health Reform Happened: Or Why Political Scientists Who Write about Public Policy Shouldn't Assume They Know How to Shape It,” Perspectives on Politics 8 (2010): 861–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. For example, President Obama ceased pushing for the public option, which was stripped from the law in the Senate against the backdrop of a filibuster threat from moderate Democrats (after making it out of the House).

65. Hacker, Jacob S. and Pierson, Paul, “The Dog That Almost Barked: What the ACA Repeal Fight Says about the Resilience of the American Welfare State,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43 (2018): 551–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Lieberman, Robert C., Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Mettler, Dividing Citizens.

67. For example, the Family Support Act of 1988 replaced the Work Incentive program (WIN) with a welfare-to-work program called the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program (JOBS).

68. The House of Representatives did pass Nixon's Family Assistance Plan in 1970, but it died in the Senate Finance Committee, as the number of Senators opposed was sufficient to prevent a floor vote—including liberals (who thought it didn't go far enough) and conservatives (who thought it too generous).

69. Weaver, R. Kent, Ending Welfare as We Know It (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

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71. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 175.

72. Mary Jo Bane and David T. Ellwood, “Slipping into and out of Poverty: The Dynamics of Spells” (NBER working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 1983); Robert Hartley, Carlos Lamarche, and James P. Ziliak, “Welfare Reform and the Intergenerational Transmission of Dependence” (IZA discussion paper no. 10942, Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany, August 2017); Dylan Matthews, “‘If the Goal Was to Get Rid of Poverty, We Failed’: The Legacy of the 1996 Welfare Reform,” Vox, June 20, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11789988/clintons-welfare-reform.

73. Matthews, “If the Goal Was to Get Rid of Poverty, We Failed.”

74. Mead, Lawrence M., The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America (New York: BasicBooks, 1992)Google Scholar, cited in Soss, Joe and Schram, Sanford F., “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review 101 (2007): 111–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75. For example, in the 1950s, about 20 states disqualified children from receiving benefits if they were born to an unwed mother who was already enrolled.

76. Some states developed more generous eligibility standards, higher earned income disregards, and stronger linkages to other social benefits; others implemented more stringent work requirements, increased penalties for failure to work, and shorter time limits.

77. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Setting the Baseline: A Report on State Welfare Waivers (Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, June 1997).

78. Tommy Thompson, “W-2, Wisconsin Works,” Division of Economic Support, 1996, http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=1516. Also see, e.g., Virginia Ellis, “California's Welfare-to-Work Program Shows Success,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1994.

79. Other advocates, like Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, sought to flood the program with enrollments to force its conversion into a guaranteed basic income. Also see Kazuyo Tsuchiya, “Johnnie Tillmon (1926–1995),” Black Past, January 23, 2007, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/tillmon-johnnie-1926-1995/.

80. Weaver, Ending Welfare as We Know It.

81. Ibid., 203–204.

82. Weaver, R. Kent, “Polls, Priming, and the Politics of Welfare Reform,” in Navigating Public Opinion, ed. Cook, Jeff Manza Fay Lomax, and Page, Benjamin I. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 116Google Scholar, quoted in Soss and Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback.”

83. Ibid.

84. Weaver, Ending Welfare as We Know It; Galvin, Daniel J., Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), ch 6Google Scholar.

85. Weaver, Ending Welfare as We Know It, 211–17.

86. Ibid., 205.

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89. Burke, Thomas F. and Barnes, Jeb, “Layering, Kludgeocracy and Disability Rights: The Limited Influence of the Social Model in American Disability Policy,” Social Policy and Society 17 (2018): 101–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 was so watered down that only 10 percent of its initial funding proposal was ultimately authorized, diluting its effects. Also see Barnes, Jeb E. and Burke, Thomas F., How Policy Shapes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation, and the Struggle over Injury Compensation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar. Also see Bagenstos, Samuel R., Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Erkulwater, Jennifer L., Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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91. Steven F. Hipple, “Labor Force Participation: What Has Happened Since the Peak?” Monthly Labor Review, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/pdf/labor-force-participation-what-has-happened-since-the-peak.pdf; Kathy Ruffing, “How Much of the Growth in Disability Insurance Stems from Demographic Changes?” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 27, 2014, https://www.cbpp.org/research/how-much-of-the-growth-in-disability-insurance-stems-from-demographic-changes.

92. Erkulwater, Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net, 21.

93. The act charged the SSA with developing expanded criteria that would include mental disorders, experiences with pain and musculoskeletal disorders, and the combined effects of multiple impairments. Greater weight was also to be given to evidence provided by the applicant's physician. See Liebman, Jeffrey B., “Understanding the Increase in Disability Insurance Benefit Receipt in the United States,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 29 (2015): 123–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

94. Erkulwater, Jennifer L., “Disability Insurance and SSI,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Welfare State, ed. Beland, Daniel, Howard, Christopher, and Morgan, Kimberly (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

95. The new model operated from the premise that “assessing an impairment could not be done in isolation from assessing the environment in which a person functioned and societal expectations about what constituted “normal” behavior and abilities.” Erkulwater, Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net, 19.

96. Autor, “The Unsustainable Rise of the Disability Rolls in the United States”; see also Liebman, “Understanding the Increase in Disability Insurance Benefit Receipt.”

97. The prevalence rate is “the ratio of the number of disabled-worker beneficiaries in current-payment status to the number of persons insured for disability benefits.” OASDI, The 2018 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees.

98. Dylan Matthews, “In Defense of Social Security Disability Insurance,” Vox, March 8, 2018. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/6/16735966/social-security-disability-insurance.

99. Autor, David H. and Duggan, Mark G., “The Growth in the Disability Insurance Roles: A Fiscal Crisis Unfolding,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (2006): 71–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Autor, “The Unsustainable Rise of the Disability Rolls in the United States.”

100. Autor, “The Unsustainable Rise of the Disability Rolls in the United States.” By 2018, however, projections had become more sanguine. The Trustees wrote: “Even under the high-cost assumptions, however, the combined OASI and DI Trust Fund reserves on hand plus their estimated future income are sufficient to fully cover their combined cost until 2030. Under the intermediate assumptions, the combined starting fund reserves plus estimated future income are sufficient to fully cover cost until 2034 … under the low-cost assumptions, the DI program and the combined OASDI program achieve sustainable solvency.” OASDI, The 2018 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees.

101. Burke and Barnes, “Layering, Kludgeocracy and Disability Rights.”

102. Thomas F. Burke and Jeb Barnes, “Republicans Want to Reform Disability Insurance. Here's Why That's Hard,” Washington Post Monkey Cage, February 17, 2015.

103. Later called the National Council on Disability (NCD).

104. National Council on Disability (formerly National Council on the Handicapped), Toward Independence: An Assessment of Federal Laws and Programs Affecting Persons with Disabilities—With Legislative Recommendations: A Report to the President and to the Congress of the United States (Washington, DC: National Council on Disability, February 1986), https://www.ncd.gov/publications/1986/February1986.

105. Burke and Barnes, “Layering, Kludgeocracy and Disability Rights.”

106. Ibid.; Bagenstos, Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement.

107. Tense layering is from Kay, Adrian, “Tense Layering and Synthetic Policy Paradigms: The Politics of Health Insurance in Australia,” Australian Journal of Political Science 42 (2007): 579–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burke and Barnes, “Layering, Kludgeocracy and Disability Rights”; Bagenstos, Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement.

108. Burke and Barnes, “Layering, Kludgeocracy and Disability Rights,” 108.

109. Ibid.

110. Burke and Barnes, “Republicans Want to Reform Disability Insurance.” Also see Rebecca Vallas, Shawn Fremstad, and Lisa Ekman, “A Fair Shot for Workers with Disabilities,” Center for American Progress, January 28, 2015, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/reports/2015/01/28/105520/a-fair-shot-for-workers-with-disabilities/.

111. OASDI, The 2019 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds (Washington, DC: Social Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/).

112. Chloe N. Thurston, At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

113. Ibid., 161–63, 164.

114. At different junctures, other boundary groups included African Americans, low-income citizens, veterans, and farmers. Thurston, Chloe N., “Policy Feedback in the Public-Private Welfare State: Advocacy Groups and Access to Government Homeownership Programs, 1934–1954,” Studies in American Political Development 29 (2015): 250–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.