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Dismantling does not even merit a mention in most public policy textbooks.
This book offers a careful examination of the politics of social policy in an era of austerity and conservative governance. Focusing on the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Pierson provides a compelling explanation for the welfare state's durability and for the few occasions where each government was able to achieve significant cutbacks. The programmes of the modern welfare state - the 'policy legacies' of previous governments - generally proved resistant to reform. Hemmed in by the political supports that have developed around mature social programmes, conservative opponents of the welfare state were successful only when they were able to divide the supporters of social programmes, compensate those negatively affected, or hide what they were doing from potential critics. The book will appeal to those interested in the politics of neo-conservatism as well as those concerned about the development of the modern welfare state. It will attract readers in the fields of comparative politics, public policy, and political economy.
Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth.Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America’s private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change. Dismantling Solidarity is both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
Discusses the reversal of desegration in public schools
Bureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. And yet the aftermath of September 11 has opened the door to a reassessment of the role of a skilled civil service in the survival and viability of democratic society. Here, Ezra Suleiman offers a timely and powerful corrective to the widespread view that bureaucracy is the source of democracy's ills. This is a book as much about good governance as it is about bureaucratic organizations. Suleiman asks: Is democratic governance hindered without an effective instrument in the hands of the legitimately elected political leadership? Is a professional bureaucracy required for developing but not for maintaining a democratic state? Why has a reform movement arisen in recent years championing the gradual dismantling of bureaucracy, and what are the consequences? Suleiman undertakes a comparative analysis of the drive toward a civil service grounded in the New Public Management. He argues that "government reinvention" has limited bureaucracy's capacity to adequately serve the public good. All bureaucracies have been under political pressure in recent years to reduce not only their size but also their effectiveness, and all have experienced growing deprofessionalism and politicization. He compares the impact of this evolution in both democratic societies and societies struggling to consolidate democratic institutions. Dismantling Democratic States cautions that our failure to acknowledge the role of an effective bureaucracy in building and preserving democratic political systems threatens the survival of democracy itself.
"All across America, our largest city school districts have been rapidly and dramatically changing. From Chicago to Detroit in the Midwest to Newark and New York in the East, charter schools continue to crop up everywhere while traditional public schools are shuttered. In what remains of public schools, school boards are increasingly bypassed or suspended by state-appointed managers who are often non-local actors and public services are increasingly privatized. This book tells the story of how as early as the 1980s, reform efforts-both state and federal-have essentially transformed Detroit's school system by introducing new education players like Betsy DeVos, who have gradually eclipsed local actors for the control of schools. I argue that Detroit's embittered school wars are fought between two fronts: a dwindling regime of native school leaders and local constituents (i.e., teachers, parents, students, community activists, etc.) against the ascension of new and outside managers. It is a story that captures the greatest school organizational change since the Progressive Era"--
In the first volume of its kind, a collection of top policy scholars combine empirical and methodological analysis in the field of comparative policy studies to provide compelling insights into the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies across regional and national boundaries.
A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways—and how to fight back In the “vigorous, well-informed” (Kirkus Reviews) A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, the co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard expose the potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that are pushing a radical vision to do away with public education. “Cut[ing] through the rhetorical fog surrounding a host of free-market reforms and innovations” (Mike Rose), Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire lay bare the dogma of privatization and reveal how it fits into the current context of right-wing political movements. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door “goes above and beyond the typical explanations” (SchoolPolicy.org), giving readers an up-close look at the policies—school vouchers, the war on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and more—driving the movement’s agenda. Called “well-researched, carefully argued, and alarming” by Library Journal, this smart, essential book has already incited a public reckoning on behalf of the millions of families served by the American educational system—and many more who stand to suffer from its unmaking. “Just as with good sci-fi,” according to Jacobin, “the authors make a compelling case that, based on our current trajectory, a nightmare future is closer than we think.”
This book examines the emergence of authoritarian populist regimes, analyzing Brazil as a case study. The authors explain how the tactics employed by the Bolsonaro administration to dismantle bureaucracy and public policies, especially labour and social policies, find expression in the fiscal austerity measures recently inscribed in the Federal Constitution: a counter-democratic device employed by technical and financial elites to systemically derail the social protection system. Through this in-depth case study, the book presents new theoretical arguments and concepts that can be useful to understand the dynamics of such new regimes, and discussing similar cases in other contexts. Democratic governments in Brazil, driven by social movements and political actors, have strengthened social protection through a distinctive institutional architecture that combines the strengthening of public bureaucracies, the creation of intergovernmental networks, and the democratic instances of social participation and agreement. The contributions throughout this volume analyze these transformations in different sectors of public policy, such as labour, employment, pensions, food and nutrition security, health, and social assistance. Each contribution discusses the recent trajectory through a political analysis of the main actors and institutions, reform processes and policy changes, and the results achieved. Finally, the existing weaknesses in each of these social protection sectors are identified in the context of the literature on policy dismantling, revealing the strategies used to take advantage of these political and institutional weaknesses. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of political science and public policy, interested in a better understanding of de-democratization by social policy dismantling.
Since the 1970s a constellation of aligned conservative institutions, grassroots issue groups, academics, intellectuals, industry leaders, and politicians has been enormously successful at shifting fundamental attitudes toward government and its basic role in American society. These groups have focused on winning the hearts and minds of the people not with detailed policy prescriptions but with a set of beliefs and conventional wisdom, a vaguely defined national philosophy that protects the privileges of the wealthy and powerful. There wasn't one strategy or one secret plan but rather multiple strands, sometimes parallel and sometimes in competition, that in concert have amounted to an effective attack on government. Part I of the paper is an attempt at an analysis of these strategic directions in order to expose their essential elements. Part II describes ten strategies to build a movement and a nation rooted in protecting and advancing the common good. Dismantling Democracy is not about the next election. It is not about policy or specific elements of a progressive agenda. It is a call for serious inquiry, discussion and debate by those who believe in democracy and the common good.