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⁵ Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol, “State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States,” in Evans, Reuschemeyer, and Skocpol (fn. 2), 143–44. The Farm Bureau's development has been widely linked to policy feedback, even by scholars not inclined to emphasize the independent role of government activity. In his classic study of interest groups, Mancur Olson argues that “the Farm Bureau was created by the government.” Olson, , The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 149.Google ScholarTruman, David B. also identified “the aid of federal officials” as important in launching the Farm Bureau. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 87–93.Google Scholar Another policy feedback in agriculture, see also Moe, Terry M., The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the Internal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 181–91Google Scholar; Valelly, Richard, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Hansen, John Mark, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar, chaps. 2–3.

⁶ Vogel, David, Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 13–14.Google Scholar

⁷ On the importance of political entrepreneurs, see Mancur Olson (fn. 5); Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 35–37Google Scholar; and Moe (fn. 5), 37–39.

⁸ See, for example, Day, Christine L., What Older Americans Think: Interest Groups and Aging Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another to Kent Weaver for bringing this example to my attention.

⁹ Bo Rothstein, “Labor Market Institutions and Working-Class Strength,” in Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth (fn. 3).

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¹² McConnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Random House, 1966)Google Scholar; Stigler, George J., “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (Spring 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ For interesting discussions of path dependency, see Krasner, Stephen, “Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics 16 (January 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David, Shaping the Political Agenda: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

¹⁴ Duerst-Lahti, Georgia, “The Government's Role in Building the Women's Movement,” Political Science Quarterly 104 (Summer 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Weir and Skocpol (fn. 5), 123–25, 129–32.

¹⁶ Ikenberry, G. John, Reasons of State: Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., 44.

¹⁸ Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990–1992 (Oxford and Cambridge: Black wells, 1992).Google Scholar

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²⁰ For an analysis that suggests how such links might be drawn, see Swenson, Peter, “Labor and the Limits of the Welfare State: The Politics of Intraclass Conflict and Cross-Class Alliances in Sweden and West Germany,” Comparative Politics 23, no. 4 (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another-Ander-sen himself did explore the political consequences of policy choices in an earlier work, Politics against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). This analysis is rather murky on the question of exactly how policy feedback influences political change. In Esping-Andersen's account policies seem to provide some combination of resources, material incentives, and cognitive signals that encourage certain patterns of political behavior.

²¹ For a more complete summary, see North, 93–95.

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²⁶ Interestingly, within political science the idea of “lock-ins” (though focusing on institutions rather than policies) has mainly been utilized in the field of international relations. See for example Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 100–106.Google Scholar Another draws on Arthur Stinchcombe's analysis of sunk costs. See Stinchcombe, , Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968), 120–25.Google Scholar

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²⁸ For a pathbreaking study of networks of social interdependence, see Schelling, Thomas C., Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).Google Scholar Another contribution of public policies to the development of these social networks is discussed in more detail in Hirsch, Fred, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kahn, Alfred E., “The Tyranny of Small Decisions: Market Failures, Imperfections, and the Limits of Economics,” Kyklos 19 (1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ For an introduction to the ways in which these kinds of arguments are reshaping institutional analysis, see March and Olsen (fn. 2); and Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J., eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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³¹ See, for example, Simon, Herbert A., Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957)Google Scholar; Lindblom, Charles E., “The ‘Science’ of Muddling Through,” Public Administration Review 19 (Spring 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and March, James G., “Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity, and the Engineering of Choice,” Bell Journal of Economics 9 (Autumn 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³³ Ibid., 315–16.

³⁴ Lee, Bradford A., “The Miscarriage of Necessity and Invention: Proto-Keynesianism and Democratic States in the 1930s,” in Hall, 129–70.Google Scholar

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³⁶ See also Ann Shola Orloff and Skocpol, Theda, “‘Why Not Equal Protection?’: Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900–1911, and the United States, 1880s–1920,” American Sociological Review 49 (December 1984)Google Scholar; and Orloff, Ann Shola, “The Political Origins of America's Belated Welfare State,” in Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda, eds, The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

³⁷ Heclo(fn. 30), 301, 308.

³⁸ Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy-Making in Britain,” Comparative Politics (forthcoming). See also idem, “Conclusion: The Politics of Keynesian Ideas,” in Hall, 361–91.Google Scholar

³⁹ On Vietnam, see Fromkin, David and Chace, James, “What Are the Lessons of Vietnam?” Foreign Affairs 63 (Spring 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another the War on Poverty, consider the contrasting lessons drawn in Murray, Charles, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (NewYork: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; and Schwartz, John E., America's Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987). Another am grateful to Peter Hall for suggesting these examples to me.

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⁴⁴ This perhaps explains why students of foreign policy-making, which often features decision making by small groups or even single individuals, have had a particular interest in learning processes. See the literature reviewed in Khong, Yuen Foong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, chap. 1. Khong's work offers an ambitious and thoughtful attempt to address many of the objections to learning arguments.

⁴⁵ On the importance of the scope of conflict, see Schattschneider, E. E., The Semisovereign People (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1960).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Kingdon makes this point in his careful study of the policy-making process. Kingdon, John, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).Google Scholar

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⁴⁸ Kuklinski, James H., “Information and the Study of Politics,” in John Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski, Information and Democratic Processes, 391.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ On focusing events, see Kingdon (fn. 46), 99–105.

⁵⁰ See, for example, Leonard, Herman B., Checks Unbalanced: The Quiet Side of Public Spending (New York: Basic Books, 1986)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

⁵¹ Wilensky, Harold, The New Corporatism, Centralization, and the Welfare State (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976).Google Scholar Another also Hibbs, Douglas A. Jr, and Madsen, Henrik Jess, “Public Reactions to the Growth of Taxation and Government Expenditure,” World Politics 33 (April 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁵⁵ This is much more likely to be true in an institutional setting like that of the United States, where the location of accountability is often uncertain. See Pierson, Paul and Weaver, R. Kent, “Political Institutions and Loss Imposition: Pensions Policy in Britain, Canada and the United States,” in Weaver, R. Kent and Rockman, Burt, eds., Do Institutions Matter? Government Capabilities in the U.S. and Abroad (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993).Google Scholar

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⁵⁹ For those uninterested in the roots of current politics, policy feedback arguments may nonetheless be useful. The fact that such political consequences of policy design are likely to be discernible to policymakers raises an additional issue that deserves attention: the extent to which decision makers self-consciously design policies to produce particular feedback effects. Especially as government activity becomes widespread, politicians are likely to become aware that policy choices have political consequences. This suggests that feedback effects should not only be incorporated into political analysis because previous policies influence current politics. Current political struggles may well reflect concern over the future political consequences of contemporary policy choices. Cognizance of the possible range of such consequences may give analysts important insights into the strategic choices facing contemporary political actors.

⁶⁰ Lowi, Theodore J., “American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory,” World Politics 16 (July 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Four Systems of Policy, Politics, and Choice,” Public Administration Review 32 (July-August 1972); Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 330–37Google Scholar; and idem, American Government, 4th ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1989), 422–47, 590–604.

⁶¹ It is probably no coincidence that the two significant efforts to develop “policies produce politics” typologies have been developed in American politics rather than comparative politics, which allows Lowi and Wilson at least to attempt to “hold constant” elements of the broader political environment. Instructively, Elizabeth Sanders's study of natural gas regulation argues that Lowi's typology starts to break down when one studies the dynamics of policy struggles over time. “Regulatory” policy seems to produce different politics in different historical contexts. Sanders, , The Regulation of Natural Gas: Policy and Politics 1938–1978 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁶² Ferejohn and Kuklinski (fn. 48); Krehbiel, Keith, Information and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCubbins, Mathew M. and Sullivan, Terry, eds., Congress: Structure and Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

⁶³ For a summary of that challenge, see March and Olsen (fn. 2), chap. 1.