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This paper explores the relationship between federalism and the policy design of labour market policies in two liberal welfare state regimes – Canada and the United States – addressing the following research question: How do variations in policy design intersect with federalism in both countries and how can these variations provide powerful, self-reinforcing or self-undermining feedback effects over time? Combining the literatures on the varieties of federalism, the liberal welfare regime, and policy design and feedback, the paper shows that paying close attention to federalism is necessary to understand diverse national policy designs that produce self-reinforcing feedback effects over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, policies likely to reduce poverty significantly have been adopted in both Canada and the United States. Yet, this poverty reduction logic has emerged in different ways in the two countries--with the United States embracing more significant departures from its policy status quo. This situation leads us to ask the following question: in each country, what are the political conditions under which public policies susceptible of reducing poverty are enacted? To answer this question, we study the politics of poverty reduction both before and during the pandemic, as we suggest that grasping the evolution of partisan and electoral patterns over time is necessary to explain what happened during the pandemic, whose impact is closely related to how it interacts with such patterns. Our analysis suggests the need to consider more carefully the impact of both crises and partisanship on social policy, including poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare‐state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian governments in response to COVID‐19. In general, we show that Canadian responses were both more rapid and comprehensive than those of the United States. This variation, we argue, can be explained by analysing the divergent political institutions, pre‐existing policy legacies, and variations in cross‐partisan consensus, which have all shaped national decision‐making in the middle of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalism plays a foundational role in structuring public expectations about how the United States will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as both an unprecedented public-health crisis and an economic recession. As in prior crises, state governments are expected to be primary sites of governing authority, especially when it comes to immediate public-health needs, while it is assumed that the federal government will supply critical counter-cyclical measures to stabilize the economy and make up for major revenue shortfalls in the states. Yet there are reasons to believe that these expectations will not be fulfilled, especially when it comes to the critical juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the federal government has the capacity to engage in counter-cyclical spending to stabilize the economy, existing policy instruments vary in the extent to which they leverage that capacity. This leverage, we argue, depends on how decentralized policy arrangements affect the implementation of both discretionary emergency policies as well as automatic stabilization programs such as Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Evidence on the US response to COVID-19 to date suggests the need for major revisions in the architecture of intergovernmental fiscal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many argue that the frustrated implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) stems from the unprecedented level of political polarization that has surrounded the legislation. This article draws attention to the law's "institutionalDNA" as a source of political struggle in the 50 states. As designed, in the context ofUSfederalism, the lawfractured authority in ways that has opened up the possibility of contestation and confusion. The successful implementation of the ACAvaries not only across state lines but also across the various components of the law. In particular, opponents of the ACA have experienced their greatest successes when they could take advantage of weak preexisting policy legacies, high levels of institutional fragmentation, and negative public sentiments. As argued in this article, the fragmented patterns of health care politics in the 50 states identified in previous research have largely persisted during the Trump administration. Moreover, while Republicans were unsuccessful at repealing the legislation, the administration has taken advantage of its structural deficiencies to further weaken the legislation's capacity to expand access to affordable, quality health insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and asks how they fit with models of policy change. The paper illustrates that the Obama administration did adopt an array of anti-poverty measures in the stimulus bill, but these built on existing programmes rather than create new ones and much of the effort was stymied by institutional obstacles. The expansion of the Medicaid program, which was part of the ACA, was also muted by institutional opposition, but it was a more path breaking reform than is often appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is the most significant US social policy reform in half a century, and the most politically fractious. Since the law was signed by President Obama, Republicans have mobilised against it, using courts and state governments to undermine the implementation of the legislation, which was set to unfold gradually over a nine‐year period. As we describe in this article, however, the beginning of the Trump presidency in January 2017 marked a turning point in the politics of Obamacare. In the absence of Obama's veto, legislative retrenchment became a viable option for the first time. Yet, a combination of intra‐party conflict and opposition to repeal from key stakeholders doomed Republicans' initial efforts. Nevertheless, we discuss several reasons to doubt Obamacare's political stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about “American exceptionalism” in social policy, but one aspect has received relatively little attention thus far: the absence of universal public social programs where entitlements to benefits and services are derived from citizenship or residency. This absence is especially striking because other liberal welfare regimes such as Canada and the United Kingdom have long developed such programs. Focusing on policy design and using Canada as a contrasting case, this article explains why there are no universal social programs in the United States, a country where the dichotomy between social assistance and social insurance dominates. The empirical analysis focuses on three policy areas: health, pensions, and family benefits. Stressing the impact of institutional factors on policy design, the article adopts a historical institutionalist approach and shows that the explanation for the absence of universal social programs varies from one policy area to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the USA, universal coverage has long been a key objective of liberal reformers. Yet, despite the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) (commonly known as 'Obamacare') in 2010, the USA is not set to provide health care coverage to all, even if and when that reform is fully implemented. This article explores this issue by asking the following question: Why was a clear commitment to universal coverage, the norm in other industrialized countries, excluded as a core objective of the PPACA and how has post-enactment politics at both the federal and the state level further shaped coverage issues? The analysis traces the issue of universal coverage prior to the debate over the PPACA, during the 2008 presidential race, and during consideration of the bill. The article then looks at the post-enactment politics of coverage, with a particular focus on how states have responded to the planned use of the Medicaid programme to expand access to care. The article concludes by discussing how an explanation of the limits of the PPACA, in terms of both its commitment to universal coverage and, more importantly, the failure to provide comprehensive health insurance to all, requires an understanding of complex institutional and policy dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As formulated by Jacob Hacker, the concept of policy drift turned institutional theories of public policy on their heads by suggesting that consequential policy changes often happen in the absence of reform. Especially prevalent in times of political gridlock or stasis, policy drift is a useful concept for capturing how inaction can gradually diminish the effectiveness of social programmes over time. By highlighting cases of difficult-to-see policy inaction, however, Hacker's concept sets a high bar for empirical scholarship. In this article, we suggest that analyzing policy drift requires attention to comparative policy outcomes, the implementation of reforms intended to alleviate drift, and the time frame of the study. With these insights in mind, we analyze the impact of drift on US retirement security and health care coverage to reflect policy changes that have occurred since Hacker's original analysis was published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Sozialreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the mid-1970s, the United States (US) has experienced widening income and wealth inequality. Over the same period, moreover, the official poverty rate has not declined. These trends framed the socioeconomic environment as the US entered the Great Recession in 2008. This article examines the manner in which that recession affected the US, especially those people in lowincome households who were already economically vulnerable. The article asks how policy makers responded to the crisis, with a particular focus on the actions taken by the Obama administration. It concludes that a variety of measures have been put in place that offer help and support to those affected by the recession - but that the longstanding inequalities have persisted and are likely to continue to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For all the focus on economic issues in the wake of the crisis of 2008 the Obama administration has remained ambiguous about a central component of economic policy. As both candidate and President, Obama has sent mixed messages about trade policy. This ambiguity reflects wider uncertainty within the Democratic Party about global trading relationships and this paper explores and assesses the reasons for this uncertainty. A large part of the answer lies in the disparate sources of support for the Democrats. That is, the party has courted support from interest groups and core groups of voters that have widely divergent views about the value of trade liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the ongoing debate about the ideological direction of the Bush presidency and what it means for the future of US conservatism in domestic policy. The paper considers the dual nature of US conservatism and then goes on to explore the ‘conservative promise’ of the 2000 presidential election and the debate over what critiques of the Bush administration have come to call ‘big government conservatism’. Finally, the article studies two examples of how this alleged ‘big government conservatism’ has been manifested. First, the article contemplates the administration's fiscal policy. Second it looks at the 2003 reform of the Medicare system. We argue that, although these two cases provide some ground to the idea of ‘big government conservatism’, in the end this phenomenon does not add up to a coherent policy vision. Overall, beyond tax cuts, the Bush administration has failed to implement a bold conservative agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores social policy development in the United States since the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency. Starting from an analysis of the discourse about compassionate conservatism at the centre of the 2000 presidential campaign and proceeding to a discussion of the meaning of the more recent ownership society blueprint, it underlines the fragmented nature of the conservative policy agenda in the United States. Yet, the article suggests that, despite this fragmentation, the ideological dominance of the right and the related absence of needed reform in key policy areas are of great significance for the future of federal social policy. Overall, the article shows how paying close attention to the nature of conservative ideas improves our understanding of social policy development in the United States. As argued, the old liberal and the traditionalist sides of American conservatism have inspired distinct yet related blueprints and reform proposals that both promote a scaling-down of existing federal social programmes and a return to traditional forms of economic security (i.e. charity and personal savings). The article underlines the relationship between these blueprints and policy drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the partisan politics that led to the passage of the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act in the U.S. The authors argue that the stealth-like conservative Medicare reforms espoused by the Republicans prompted most Democrats to oppose the stipulations of their proposed law.

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 was a landmark in American social policy. There were a number of objectives, but the primary purpose was to end the Aid to Families with Dependent Children programme which was a cash benefit paid to poor, very largely single-parent, families. The underlying theme was that AFDC had constituted a 'something for nothing' programme which had violated the primacy of work. The Act acknowledged that government had an initial duty to aid those falling on hard times, but also stated that there comes a time when government's obligation diminishes. This legislation has generated much interest in the UK, but there is a danger of important elements of the American story being overlooked. In order to understand, therefore, just what is going on this paper looks at the US welfare-to-work experiment on its own terms. The article looks at the movement behind reform and at why, despite evidence of increased hardship for some, five years on from passage the conventional wisdom is that PRWORA has been a success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Focuses on the debate over viability of existing pension system in the United States. Control of pension system by government; Government policy on public welfare reform; Application of foreign pension policies to pension reform in US.

Focuses on the introduction of the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act in August 1996 which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in the United States. Information on US President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan; In-depth look at welfare reform and work ethics in the United States.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted, and continues to operate, under conditions of political polarization. In this article, we argue that the law's intergovernmental structure has amplified political conflict over its implementation by distributing governing authority to political actors at both levels of the American federal system. We review the ways in which the law's demands for institutional coordination between federal and state governments (and especially the role it preserves for governors and state legislatures) have created difficulties for rolling out health-insurance exchanges and expanding the Medicaid program. By way of contrast, we show how the institutional design of the ACA's regulatory reforms of the insurance market, which diminish the reform's political salience, has allowed for considerably less friction during the implementation process. This article thus highlights the implications of multi-level institutional designs for the post-enactment politics of major reforms., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)