John Maynard Keynes once noted that "Madmen in authority... are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." O'Connor (politics and public policy, Griffith U., Australia) supports this observation in his study of the development of the American welfare system and the broader world of political language and rhetoric within which it has been shaped. Studying welfare policy from Lyndon Johnson's liberal social agenda to Bill Clinton's "ending welfare as we know it," he divides the period (and his book) into three sections corresponding to welfare politics that conformed to liberal ideology, the conservative backlash against liberalism, and the forging of a conservative welfare system. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Compared to other rich Western democracies, the United States historically has done less to help its citizens adapt to the uncertainties of life in a market economy. Nor does the immediate future seem to promise anything different. In Welfare As We Know It, Charles Noble offers a groundbreaking explanation of why America is so different, arguing that deeply rooted political factors, not public opinion, have limited what social reformers have been able to accomplish.

This book is about the development of the American social welfare state, from FDR to LBJ, with particular emphasis on the ideas (social, political, and economic) that have formed the basis of America's social welfare state.

American social welfare policy -- Social policy and the American welfare state -- A brief history of the American social welfare state -- Social welfare policy research : a framework for policy analysis -- Discrimination in american society -- Poverty in America -- The voluntary and for-profit social sectors -- The voluntary sector today -- Privatization and human service corporations -- The government sector -- The making of governmental policy -- Tax policy and income distribution -- Social insurance programs -- Public assistance programs -- The American health ccare system -- Mental health and substance abuse policy -- Criminal justice -- Child welfare policy -- Housing policies -- The politics of food policy and rural life -- The American welfare state in perspective -- The American welfare state in international perspective -- Glossary -- Index

"Useful for scholars and students both for its insights into the policy-making process and for its account of how American social policy arrived at the sorry state we find it in today." -- Contemporary Sociology

Compared to other rich Western democracies, the U.S. does less to help its citizens adapt to the uncertainties of life in a market economy. In Welfare As We Knew It, Charles Noble offers a groundbreaking explanation of why America is so different. Drawing on research in comparative politics, history, and sociology, he demonstrates that deeply-rooted political factors, not public opinion, have limited what reformers have been able to accomplish. Rich historical analysis covering the Wilson administration to the present is followed by a provocative look at future U. S. social policy. Reformers who want government to do more, Noble argues, must refocus their activities on political and institutional change, such as campaign finance and labor-law reform, if they hope to succeed. Taut, comprehensive, and accessible, with a much-needed international perspective, this book will change the way we look at U. S. social policy.

The Welfare State Nobody Knows challenges a number of myths and half-truths about U.S. social policy. The American welfare state is supposed to be a pale imitation of "true" welfare states in Europe and Canada. Christopher Howard argues that the American welfare state is in fact larger, more popular, and more dynamic than commonly believed. Nevertheless, poverty and inequality remain high, and this book helps explain why so much effort accomplishes so little. One important reason is that the United States is adept at creating social programs that benefit the middle and upper-middle classes, but less successful in creating programs for those who need the most help. This book is unusually broad in scope, analyzing the politics of social programs that are well known (such as Social Security and welfare) and less well known but still important (such as workers' compensation, home mortgage interest deduction, and the Americans with Disabilities Act). Although it emphasizes developments in recent decades, the book ranges across the entire twentieth century to identify patterns of policymaking. Methodologically, it weaves together quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to answer fundamental questions about the politics of U.S. social policy. Ambitious and timely, The Welfare State Nobody Knows asks us to rethink the influence of political parties, interest groups, public opinion, federalism, policy design, and race on the American welfare state.

Scholars working in or sympathetic to American political development (APD) share a commitment to accurately understanding the history of American politics - and thus they question stylized facts about America's political evolution. Like other approaches to American politics, APD prizes analytical rigor, data collection, the development and testing of theory, and the generation of provocative hypotheses. Much APD scholarship indeed overlaps with the American politics subfield and its many well developed literatures on specific institutions or processes (for example Congress, judicial politics, or party competition), specific policy domains (welfare policy, immigration), the foundations of (in)equality in American politics (the distribution of wealth and income, race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender orientation), public law, and governance and representation. What distinguishes APD is careful, systematic thought about the ways that political processes, civic ideals, the political construction of social divisions, patterns of identity formation, the making and implementation of public policies, contestation over (and via) the Constitution, and other formal and informal institutions and processes evolve over time - and whether (and how) they alter, compromise, or sustain the American liberal democratic regime. APD scholars identify, in short, the histories that constitute American politics. They ask: what familiar or unfamiliar elements of the American past illuminate the present? Are contemporary phenomena that appear new or surprising prefigured in ways that an APD approach can bring to the fore? If a contemporary phenomenon is unprecedented then how might an accurate understanding of the evolution of American politics unlock its significance? Featuring contributions from leading academics in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development provides an authoritative and accessible analysis of the study of American political development.

"Policy change is not predictable from election results or public opinion. The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking"--