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February 11 - February 23, 2021
became accustomed to thinking
as belonging to the private sphere
Policies also establish resource commitments ...
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Power of Groups Analysts most typically examine how organized groups and associations influence government and shape policy outcomes, but ample evidence shows that the relationship often works in reverse as well.
many groups “sprang up after the passage of dramatic new legislation that established the major outlines of public policy in their areas,” concluding that in such instances, “the formation of new groups was one of the consequences of major new legislation, not one of the causes of its passage.”
Interest group activity cannot be explained simply as the function of changes in public opinion or entrepreneurial leaders, reasoned Walker; to the contrary, several public policies influenced the likelihood of groups to form.
Public policies themselves can also shape which kinds of groups form and grow and which fail to coalesce. In part, this is a function of the types of resources provided by policies, whether directly or through opportunities they may create.
Olson’s theory, when paired with Walker’s observations, helps to explain why, in the wake of policy enactment, trade associations and other industry groups that stand to benefit substantially from the existence of public policies are more likely to mobilize and take political action than are ordinary citizens, whose interest in a given policy is more diffuse.
In addition to resources, the visibility of the costs and benefits flowing from a public policy can shape the likelihood that groups will coalesce around it.
Public policies may vary in the extent to which they stimulate social movement and associational activity on the part of ordinary citizens and the types of goals that such groups pursue.
Goss (2013, 168) argues that policy feedback effects are contingent on not only the sociopolitical context but also the design of particular policies: “Different policies of inclusion can have different effects on participatory citizenship.”
Meaning of Citizenship Citizenship encompasses the rights, duties, and obligations imposed by government as well as citizens’ responses to them, including their political attitudes and participation.
First and foremost, public policies fundamentally affect membership in the political community.
comparative case study of immigrants to Canada and the United States, Bloemraad contends that the context of their reception—specifically, the policies governing settlement and ethnic diversity in a country—can offer symbolic and material resources that incentivize citizenship and participation to varying degrees. She dubs this process “structured mobilization”
Beyond affecting membership in a polity, public policies also affect the status, or what Judith Shklar (1991) called “standing,” of those who are legal citizens of a political community. They can engender social stratification—for example, by extending political and civil rights to members of some groups and denying them to others—and through such means promote feedback effects.
Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza found that these changes, by altering the composition of the electorate through exclusion of disproportionately low-income and minority individuals, effectively altered the outcome of several US Senate races and at least one presidential election. They speculated that such electoral outcomes might in turn shape future policy developments, thereby epitomizing feedback dynamics (Uggen and Manza 2002).
Robert Dahl (2003, 152): “In order to exercise the fundamental rights to which citizens in a democratic order are entitled—to vote, speak, publish, protest, assemble, organize, among others—citizens must also possess the minimal resources that are necessary in order to take advantage of the opportunities and to exercise their rights.”
These scholars, by arguing that policies guaranteeing social rights affect political participation, implied potential feedback effects.
Several scholars have advanced ideas about how social rights affect citizens’ status in society.
A few scholars have built on these ideas to explore how policies that affect social citizenship in terms of stratification can influence political mobilization, with subsequent effects on public policy.
Public policies can also influence identity. Steve Engel (2014, 683) conceptualizes citizenship less as a matter of rights or obligations and more as “a lens through which the regulatory authorities of the state define and see the individual.”
Public policies can also affect how citizens view themselves and others in the polity.
Alternatively, the basis of eligibility for a policy may influence its impact on views of deservingness.
Public policies are also known to affect what might be considered active citizenship, or people’s degree of involvement in politics or other forms of civic engagement.
Our discussion thus far indicates the broad array of ways in which policies can reshape the contours of politics and in time affect the next round of policymaking.
The final line of inquiry in the previous section—how policies affect the meaning of citizenship—is the central focus of much of the recent policy feedback research.
the relationship between policies and mass political behavior in an effort to identify and explicate the mechanisms by which policies
policy feedback scholars have delved into what could also be termed the “black box” of public policy to discern how specific components of policies affect the political behavior of ordinary citizens.
Many public policies offer citizens payments, goods, or services—or in the case of taxes, they may collect payments from them—and any of these experiences may engender resource effects, shaping participation.
resources—free time, money, and civic skills—each bear a positive relationship to civic engagement. When a policy provides an individual with benefits that have monetary value, those resources may help overcome the costs of participation. Similarly, when policies provide education benefits—another key predictor of civic and political engagement (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980)—participation may increase.
Public policies also impose rules and procedures on citizens,
Interpretive effects refer to the ability of public policies to shape norms, values, and attitudes.
the Civic Voluntarism Model implies that some resources may themselves also foster interpretive effects,
Scholars find that the actual fungible resources provided by social welfare policies have an impact on civic engagement.
Policy benefits can also increase political participation by providing individuals and organizations with incentives to mobilize and advocate in their defense.
policy resources create an impetus for political mobilization by political parties and other organizations.
Interpretive effects of policies may be fostered through the impact of resources or directly through features of policy design and implementation. Any of these may convey messages to people about government or their relationship to it or the status of other citizens, and the resulting attitudinal responses may shape people’s subsequent participation.
Living under a particular policy regime can affect the way people view their identities as citizens (Mettler and Soss 2004; Patashnik 2008).
Constructed identities may be both normative and evaluative in nature, and they can ascribe a group with either positive or negative attributes (Schneider and Ingram 1993).
A significant focus of their scholarship is the degree to which social welfare policy designs affect political attitudes and support for the programs (Andreß and Heien 2001; Edlund 1999; Jakobsen 2011; Larsen 2008; Svallfors 1997).
Although the design of a policy can influence both elite and mass attitudes about the relative value of a particular group of beneficiaries, the implementation of a particular policy can also affect people’s attitudes toward both government and their own personal political efficacy. For many beneficiaries of public policy, interactions with various disbursement or oversight agencies provide citizens with their primary, and sometimes their only, direct experience with government. It therefore comes as no surprise that these interactions can serve as a proxy for the whole of government,
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The way a policy is implemented is not, of course, wholly unconnected to its design; in fact, legislation and subsequent bureaucratic rules usually determine the manner in which policy benefits are distributed.
experiences of policy receipt affected their sense of political efficacy and, in turn, their participation.
Several other studies confirm Soss’s conclusion that the nature of individuals’ interaction with government agencies, as dictated by a particular policy design, can shape their views about government.
administrative red tape can have a deleterious effect on the experience of citizenship for already disadvantaged groups.
those beneficiaries who have primarily positive encounters with policy disbursement agencies report similarly positive attitudes toward government and about their own political efficacy.
policies administered without interaction with an obvious government presence can affect views of government capacity as well.
The hidden nature of these policies not only makes it difficult for citizens to form and express preferences about them but also fosters a sense that the market, not government, is responsible for addressing public needs.
In combination, a specific policy’s design and implementation can shape both the way that individuals and groups view the value of their citizenship and how they assess the efficacy of government agencies. These evaluations can in turn affect citizens’ decision to participate in politics (Mettler and Soss 2004).
Because interpretive effects engender political learning for political elites as well as for the mass public, policies have the ability to entrench and exacerbate participatory inequalities as specific designs and implementation schemes become path dependent.
