The Politics of Child Support in America. By Jocelyn Elise
Crowley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 217p. $65.00
cloth, $23.00 paper.
Jocelyn Crowley argues that child support policy is an example of
innovation through entrepreneurial activity over time. Relying on
secondary and original sources, she identifies four different sets of
entrepreneurs—social workers, conservatives, women
legislators/women's groups, and fathers' rights groups.
Crowley claims that over the long term, policies continuously evolve
and actors enter, exit, and reenter the political arena. Policy
entrepreneurs are the central actors who create policy change. She
defines policy entrepreneurs as people who are alert to new
opportunities, persist in advocating their ideas, and employ rhetorical
ingenuity to frame their ideas in novel ways (p. 8). Groups, as well as
individuals, have these entrepreneurial characteristics. Changes in
child support policy, in the author's view, can be explained by
changes in the domination of the political arena of different
entrepreneurial groups.