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Bringing the Constituents Back In: The Politics of Social Security in the 1950s Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 ERIC S. YELLIN
This article argues that scholars’ current understanding of Social Security policy making in the 1950s is missing a crucial component: massive letter-writing campaigns by ordinary Americans. Americans’ letters to Congress—and the responses of members and their aides in public debates and constituent correspondence—reflect a more vibrant, more democratic, and messier policy-making process than scholars
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Rethinking the American Industrial Policy Debate: The Political Significance of a Losing Idea Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 TOM WRAIGHT
In the early 1980s “industrial policy” seemed to be emerging as the American left’s answer to supply-side economics. Yet soon after, supply-side economics was triumphant and industrial policy back in the political wilderness. This article investigates why the American left rejected industrial policy in the 1980s but appears to be reembracing it under the Biden administration. Via reviewing the history
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Mobilizing for the Mind: Veteran Activism and the National Mental Health Act of 1946 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 JORDEN PITT
Within a year of World War II’s end, the United States federal government passed the National Mental Health Act of 1946. This bill was the country’s first significant foray into the realm of psychological health. Many studies have examined the act and its legacy, including the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health. Fewer studies, however, have investigated the significant roles of veterans
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Civic Republicanism, Liberty, and Police: The Roots of Modern English Policing Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 J. ROBERT DALEIDEN
Modern English policing arose from crime, laws, and demands for social order, but this perspective further introduces matters of philosophy that ties political liberty to political economy as being less recognized but equally powerful contributors. Shown here is how civic republican political economy (1600–1750) policing lost favor to laissez-faire utilitarian preferences (1750–1829) and helped produce
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“A Mission Without Precedent”: The Rise and Fall of the Office of Economic Opportunity, 1964–1981 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 RYAN LAROCHELLE
This article traces the history of the Office of Economic Opportunity/Community Services Administration, focusing on Richard Nixon’s failed attempt to dismantle it in 1973 and Ronald Reagan’s successful effort in 1981. I explore main two main questions: Why was Reagan able to succeed when Nixon had failed? and What does the dismantling of the agency reveal about the development of American conservatism
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Desegregation is Not a Black and White Issue: Latino Advocacy for Equal Schooling before and after Brown Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 LORRIN THOMAS
This article argues for the importance of reframing the history of school desegregation in the United States beyond Black and white and beyond the regional frames through which this history has been interpreted. In Western states, most Latino children attended schools segregated not by law but by custom starting in the early twentieth century; Latino students also encountered de facto segregation in
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Clearing the Bench: The Perils of Appointing Politicians to the Cabinet Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 JONATHAN SPIEGLER, JACOB F. H. SMITH, AIDAN LOVELY
This article provides an analysis of the potential danger to a president’s policy agenda that comes from appointing a sitting elected official to the cabinet. We present historical data on cabinet secretaries since the founding and demonstrate that concerns about seats falling to the other party following the appointment of an elected official to the cabinet date back at least to Martin Van Buren’s
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Evading Capture: U.S. Army Engineers and Railroad Policy, 1827–1853 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 ROBERT KAMINSKI
Until 1838 the U.S. government lent railroads Army engineers to survey routes. Though not strictly regulators, these army engineers would consequently face powerful versions of the incentives that make regulatory capture a pervasive problem—including an intensified “revolving door,” the opportunity for institutional empire building, and a fertile ground for cognitive capture. Nevertheless, engineering
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Oscar DePriest and Black Agency in American Politics, 1928–1934 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 GREYSON TEAGUE
Currently, much of the literature surrounding Black politics in the 1920s and 1930s understates the role that Black citizens and politicians played in challenging Jim Crow and white supremacy at the national level. Instead, different factors like the “cage” that white Southerners placed on Civil Rights legislation or the influence that New Deal programs had on electoral decisions in the Black community
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Free Speech and World War II Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 GEOFFREY R. STONE
This article presents a history of free speech in wartime in the United States from the end of World War I to the end of World War II.
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“Liberty of Conscience is Every Man’s Natural Right”: Historical Background of the First Amendment Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 JONATHAN BARTH
Liberty of conscience, encompassing free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion, has a rich history in Anglo-American political thought, long predating the drafting of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1789. The debate over licensing acts in seventeenth-century England; the advancement of principles of toleration by John Milton, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke in the same
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A Republic Goes to War: Federalists, Republicans, and Foreign Influence Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 TERRI DIANE HALPERIN
In the 1790s, the United States faced a series of crises—both domestic and foreign—which many believed threatened the nation’s very existence. These culminated in the Quasi-War with France beginning in 1796. The Federalist majority identified the greatest threats to the Republic as foreigners and their willing or unwitting American allies. Thus, they enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and
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Free Speech in the Civil War Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 ADRIAN BRETTLE
During the Civil War, many Americans were prepared for censorship if free speech undermined preserving the Union. Journalists were unable to obtain timely accurate information on the military campaigns either for fear of helping the enemy or depressing morale at home. Self-censorship was far more important than official suppression of free speech, as spontaneous popular pressure curtailed freedom of
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The Abuse of Civil Liberties in World War I Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 PAULA BAKER
Wartime pressures to protect national military and security interests inevitably create threats to civil liberties. This essay reviews the abuses of the period, carried on by public officials as well as citizens who saw themselves as acting on their behalf. There was a remarkable range of targets—with few spies to find, broadly defined disloyalty sufficed. The attempt to create a unified, loyal culture
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Free Speech Viet Nam through the War on Terror Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 WILLIAM G. MONTGOMERY
In the decades immediately following the Vietnam War, there were no significant conflicts with free speech resulting from major policy or military action. In contrast, the global war on terror following the events of September 11, 2001, mirror in many ways where prior conflicts and government action clashed with Free Speech. Forty-five days after the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor
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Gender and Disability in US State Temporary Disability Systems 1942–1949 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 ELIZABETH J. REMICK
During the 1940s, four US states established a new form of social insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI), meant to provide wage replacement to breadwinners unable to work due to nonoccupational illness or injury. The first TDI state, Rhode Island, did not initially exclude coverage of pregnancy-related disabilities, threatening the health of the TDI trust fund. Administrators and lawmakers
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Incremental Lobby Reform: Elite Interests and Governance Policies Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 JAMES STRICKLAND
Common examples of governance policies include regulations of lobbying, campaign-finance restrictions, and term limitations. Although the public generally favors these good-government reforms, the laws often restrict the autonomy of political elites. The histories of lobby reform in New York, Georgia, and Michigan illustrate how governance policies might be adopted despite elite opposition. In the
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Policy Escalation: Richard Nixon, Welfare Reform, and the Development of a Comprehensive Approach to Health Insurance Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 DANIEL SLEDGE
I argue that health insurance emerged as an important aspect of Nixon’s domestic policy agenda as a result of “policy escalation.” By policy escalation, I mean a cascading line of reasoning that causes policy makers focused on one apparently discrete issue to formulate approaches for dealing with other interconnecting policy areas. Policy escalation serves as an internal agenda-setting mechanism: as
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Christian Democracy, Labor, and the Postwar Politics of Old-Age Pension Reform Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 DENNIE OUDE NIJHUIS
Christian-democratic parties not only constituted the most successful political force in much of Western Europe during most of the twentieth century; their attitudes toward solidaristic welfare reform have arguably also been more diverse than have those of most other major political groupings during this period. Whereas existing studies have mostly attributed this variation to electoral or strategic
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Diplomatic Security Failure in Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 BRIAN J. CONSTANTINE, ADAM M. MCMAHON
Terrorists attacked the United States diplomatic compound and adjoining CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. Despite repeated warnings from officials about the security risks in Tripoli and Benghazi, we argue that intelligence, security, and organizational deficiencies within the Department of State created vulnerabilities contributing to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador
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The Armed Career Criminal Act and the Puzzle of Federal Crime Control in the Reagan Era: “It’s at the state and local levels that problems exist” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 CHARLOTTE E. ROSEN
This article examines how Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s Armed Career Criminal Act attempted to respond to the 1980s crisis of state prison overcrowding while also maintaining a political commitment to get tough on crime. Although commonly thought of as a straightforward punitive sentencing bill, this article shows that the Armed Career Criminal Act was also a desperate attempt to navigate a
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Borrowed Agency: The Institutional Capacity of the Early Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 JENNIFER WOODWARD
Borrowed capacity builds upon institutional capacity scholarship to discuss how interactions between government agencies and interest groups can increase agency resources and scope during agency formation and development. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scholars often note the lack of capacity to implement Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during the first years of the agency. I argue
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The Unlikely Heroes of Progressive Taxation: CEOs’ Support for Bill Clinton’s Tax Increase Package in 1993 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 SEITO HAYASAKI
On August 10, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, one of the largest fiscal deficit-reduction packages in US fiscal history. This law raised the top individual income tax rate from 31% to 39.6%, which increased the average effective tax rate for high-income earners and shifted the federal fiscal balance from deficit to surplus by the end of the century
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Why Consult, Why Consent? Employers in Concertation Platforms Facing Welfare State Expansion in the Netherlands, 1920–1960 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 JEROEN TOUWEN
This article analyzes the attitudes of Dutch employers toward social policy in the early twentieth century. Recent literature has evolved from an emphasis on power to an emphasis on preferences. Moving away from the traditional view that unions and social democrats forced social laws on employers, recent scholars suggest that firms saw specific advantages in the introduction of social laws. However
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Congress and the Establishment of a National Budget System in the United States during the Progressive Era Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 JAMES V. SATURNO
In order to establish a new national budget system during the Progressive Era, Congress had to overcome an earlier convention in which it used detailed appropriations in an attempt to control the budgetary actions of federal agencies and the president served no formal role. Incremental changes to strengthen congressional budgetary controls proved inadequate but provided reformers with an opportunity
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States of Immigration: Making Immigration Policy from Above and Below, 1875–1924 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 ROBIN DALE JACOBSON, DANIEL TICHENOR
For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has denounced jurisdictional ambiguities in immigration policy, regularly striking down state laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the federal government’s “broad, undoubted power.” Most scholarship on the historical evolution of US immigration policy has followed suit, rendering invisible the role of state governments and federalism in immigration policy during
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Labor Secretary Frances Perkins Reorganizes Her Department’s Immigration Enforcement Functions, 1933–1940: “Going against the Grain” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 NEIL V. HERNANDEZ
Labor Secretary Frances Perkins championed liberal immigration policies between 1933 and 1940. Some efforts were successful, but most were not due to political, economic, and social constraints on immigration policy making, especially in Congress. Yet, she reorganized the enforcement functions of her department when she created the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Narratives abound about the
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Vote Aquí Hoy: The 1975 Extension of the Voting Rights Act and the Creation of Language Minorities Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 ROSINA LOZANO
The year 1975 marked a watershed year for Spanish-surnamed people in the United States and their relationship with the federal government. In that year Congress extended the Voting Rights Act to include a “language minority” category, requiring federal election officials to translate election materials under certain conditions. By validating language rights for language minorities, Congress expanded
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Conflict over Congressional Reapportionment: The Deadlock of the 1920s Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 NICHOLAS G. NAPOLIO, JEFFERY A. JENKINS
In 1929, Congress passed a law capping the US House of Representatives at 435 seats, delegating the power to reapportion to the Executive Branch, and empowering state legislatures to redistrict with few federal limitations. The 1929 law was a compromise after nearly ten years of squabbling over how to apportion pursuant to the 1920 Census. In this article, we consider the apportionment debates of the
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Remembering Welfare as We Knew It: Understanding Neoliberalism through Histories of Welfare Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 AMY ZANONI
The political transformation that culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act fueled scholarly interest in welfare history. As politicians dismantled welfare, scholars discovered long histories of raced and gendered social control, intertwined public and private interests, and fixations on work and personal responsibility. They also recovered more promising possibilities
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Legislating Medicare Fraud: The Politics of Self-Regulation and the Creation of Professional Standards Review Organizations Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-09-01 BRIAN DOLAN, STEVEN BEITLER
Not long after the 1966 enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, evidence emerged that unscrupulous physicians and health care organizations were gaming the system. Research over the past 50 years shows that around 10 percent of the federal government’s annual cost for these programs is attributed to fraudulent claims or abuses where hospitals and treatments have been overused for undue provider profit
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Examining the Opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: “Nothing More than Bad Quality Hogwash” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-09-01 IAN MILDEN
This article examines the divide within the Republican Party between business interests and conservative evangelicals during the debate over the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). Business interests were able to build compromises by raising their concerns over practical matters such as costs. Conservative evangelicals advocated for changes due to their moral and ideological positions on
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Making Policies: The History of the Danish Child Welfare System at the Local Level Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-09-01 CECILIE BJERRE
This article examines out-of-home placements in Denmark over a seven-decade period from 1905 to 1975. The Danish state delegated this responsibility to a, using the words of Kimberly J. Morgan and Ann Shola Orloff, “difficult-to-classify public-private hybrid,” the Children’s Welfare Boards (CWBs). These CWBs comprised private citizens selected by the municipality. The article shows how the CWBs acted
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Sailors, Crimps, and Commerce: Laws Protecting Seamen, 1866–1884 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-09-01 KATHLEEN SULLIVAN
Nineteenth-century seamen were subject to exploitation by boardinghouse keepers who recouped seamen’s debt by pocketing their advance wages from a future voyage. New York’s 1866 Act for the Better Protection of Seamen, the U.S. Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872, and the 1884 Dingley Act all purported to respond to this practice of “crimping,” but each of these acts simply allowed for new arrangements
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How U.S. Health Policy Embraced Markets and Helped Wall Street Gentrify Medicine Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-09-01 BARBARA BRIDGMAN PERKINS
This article examines the financial industry’s critical role in retargeting U.S. health policy goals of improving peoples’ health in the 1960s to those of expanding institutional wealth in the 1970s. Government collaborated with finance to support not-for-profit hospitals’ use of debt to build services that augmented capital and operated like for-profit businesses. Certificate of Need, hospital rate
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Explaining the Prevalence of State Constitutional Conventions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 JOHN DINAN
Although state constitutional conventions in the United States were once called frequently and brought about significant changes in governance, recent decades have seen little convention activity. I examine the contrast between the earlier regularity of conventions and their recent absence, but from a different perspective than is usually taken—not by explaining the recent absence but rather explaining
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Defining Rockefeller Republicanism: Promise and Peril at the Edge of the Liberal Consensus, 1958–1975 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 MARSHA E. BARRETT
This article examines Rockefeller Republicanism and its status within the Republican Party by looking at the evolution of Nelson Rockefeller’s support for social welfare policy between 1958 and 1975. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller regularly appears in histories of modern conservatism as the embodiment of the liberalism that conservatives rejected, but these works rarely account for the entirety
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From Labor Rights to the Right to Work: Constituting and Resisting Social Citizenship, 1932–1953 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 DOLORES JANIEWSKI
The analysis examines the effort to incorporate labor rights into the American conception of civil liberties and the opposition to that endeavor. It focuses on three Senators—Robert Wagner, Robert La Follette, Jr., and Elbert Thomas—and New Deal officials who conceived of the National Labor Relations Act as a cornerstone of the effort to achieve “economic justice” and defended the law against its critics
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An Industry Worth Protecting? The Manufacturers Aircraft Association’s Struggle against the British Surplus, 1919–1922 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 SEAN SEYER
The American aircraft industry’s important role in the economic, military, and cultural expansion of the United States over the past one hundred years has been well documented by historians. But America’s twentieth century aerial dominance was not preordained. After World War I, the nascent American aircraft industry faced a concerted British effort to dump thousands of war surplus machines on the
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Evolution and Electoral Implications of Congressional Gun Control Issue Framing: “From Crime Control to Mass Shootings” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 GENEVIEVE QUINN
This paper traces the political development of Congressional gun control issue framing (with a specific focus from the early 1990s to the present), demonstrating that there have been two primary contexts in which gun control policy has been debated over this time frame: as a component of general crime control and as a specific response to mass shooting events. It identifies the primary historical,
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The Larger Gifts of Taxation: Foundations and Tax Reform in the Jim Crow South Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 JOAN MALCZEWSKI
In “Disquisition on Government,” John C. Calhoun divided citizens into “tax-payers” and “tax-consumers,” foreshadowing the connection that would be made between taxation and citizenship rights in twentieth-century education policy and law. Recent scholarship has explored that relationship, analyzing the language of legal cases to demonstrate that court cases reflect citizens’ perceptions of economic
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The Political Development of Schools as Cause and Solution to Delinquency Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 DANIEL S. MOAK, SARAH D. CATE
This article offers a comprehensive history of the development of the federal role in education and juvenile justice policy from the 1950s to the 1970s. We argue that the issues of juvenile delinquency and education became linked during this period and policies that were enacted reflected the belief that education was a solution to delinquency. In the mid-twentieth century, a broader variety of approaches
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Suicide versus Euthanasia in the American Press in the 1890s and 1900s: “A Man Should be Permitted to Go Out of This World Whenever He Sees Fit” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 KEVIN YUILL
Toleration of suicide and the campaign to legalize euthanasia, this article shows, are historically separate developments. From the early 1880s to the 1900s the American press featured moral discussions of suicide alongside gloomy roll calls and expressions of anxiety about an alleged increase in suicide. Focusing on an extensive discussion in the San Francisco Call in 1896, the article shows that
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Voters in a Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage in the United States, 1704–1926 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 ALAN H. KENNEDY
As early as 1704, noncitizen immigrants were legally allowed to vote in what would become the United States. By the end of the eighteenth century, noncitizens could legally vote in most states. State lawmakers offered the franchise as an incentive for white, male, Europeans of working age to migrate. However, rising immigration and nativism led states to reconsider alien suffrage, as noncitizen voting
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Business Support for Nature Protection in the Nineteenth Century Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 DAVID VOGEL
This article explores the role of business in supporting and benefiting from nature protection during the second half of the nineteenth century. It begins with the support of business for protecting scenic wilderness in California and the creation of Yellowstone, as well as the role of the railroads in encouraging easterners to visit to the nation’s western national parks—all designed to create economic
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New Policy Elites and the Affordable Care Act: The Making of Long-Term Insiders Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-02-10 WILLIAM GENIEYS, MOHAMMAD-SAÏD DARVICHE, BRENT EPPERSON
This paper examines the career trajectories of new health policy elites in the American federal government, identifying areas of expertise, partisan alignments, relationships to interest groups, and institutional constraints. We demonstrate that, in both the American and French cases, policy elites who have risen through prestigious educational institutions and undertaken extensive professionalization
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Race, Post-Reconstruction Politics, and the Birth of Federal Support for Black Colleges Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-02-10 DEONDRA ROSE
In 1890, Congress passed the Second Morrill Land-Grant Act, which provided federal resources to support the creation of nineteen Black land-grant colleges. At a historical and political moment when Black Americans faced a violently repressive backlash against what progress they had achieved during Reconstruction, the successful passage and implementation of this legislation was unlikely. How did congressional
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Clandestine Networks and Closeted Bureaucrats: AIDS and the Forming of a Gay Policy Network in California Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-02-10 STEPHEN COLBROOK
Equating the U.S. government with the national government, historians of the AIDS epidemic have hitherto ignored the role of the states in shaping the early policy response to the disease. Responding to this historiographical lacuna, this article argues that California acted as a policy innovator during the initial years of the epidemic, intervening more effectively than the federal government in the
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The Politics of Clemency in the Early American Presidency: Power Inherited, Power Refashioned Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-02-10 BRADLEY D. HAYS
This article presents case studies of pardons in the presidencies of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. In doing so, the article moves away from the idea in existing scholarship that pardons of the past were largely noble acts of statecraft, untouched by ideological, partisan, or personal political motivations. Instead, it develops an account of how and why these pardons should be understood as both
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Understanding the Controversy: The Kerner Commission, The Harvest of American Racism, and the Dynamics of Incorporating Social Science with Public Policy Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2022-02-10 RICK LOESSBERG
The Kerner Commission’s report is regarded as one of the nation’s most important works on race. However, the earlier rejection of an internal staff paper (“The Harvest of American Racism”) because it was “too radical” left a “gaping hole” in the Commission’s plans (“Harvest,” which sought to use social science to explain why only some cities encountered rioting, was to have been the report’s “core
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Membership, Mobilization, and Policy Adoption in the Gilded Age: The Case of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-12-10 ADAM CHAMBERLAIN, ALIXANDRA B. YANUS
Relatively little is known about how late nineteenth-century associations worked to get their policy goals adopted by state governments. We study this question here, considering the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and three policies it supported: scientific temperance instruction, increasing the age of consent, and prohibiting tobacco sales to minors. Overall, WCTU-supported legislation was
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Salvaging Marginalized Men: How the Department of Defense Waged the War on Poverty Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-12-10 JOHN WORSENCROFT
Architects of social welfare policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the military as a site for strengthening the male breadwinner as the head of the “traditional family.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Robert McNamara—men not often mentioned in the same conversations—both spoke of “salvaging” young men through military service. The Department of Defense created Project Transition, a
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Jacksonian Consular Reform and the Forging of America’s First Global Bureaucracy Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-12-10 SIMEON ANDONOV SIMEONOV
As revolutions swept across Central and South America in the 1820s and 1830s, Andrew Jackson’s administration undertook a landmark reform that transformed the US foreign policy apparatus into the nation’s first global bureaucracy. With the introduction of Edward Livingston’s 1833 consular reform bill to Congress, the nation embarked on a long path toward the modernization of its consular service in
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Social Welfare History in the Age of Diversity Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-12-10 EDWARD D. BERKOWITZ
This policy perspective discusses three important social welfare programs—Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families—and offers an explanation of how they have expanded over time.
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The United States Navy, Slave-Trade Suppression, and State Development Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-09-06 DAVID F. ERICSON
The mission of the United States Navy expanded significantly because of the presence of the institution of racial slavery on American soil. Most important, both proslavery and antislavery forces favored, for very different reasons, a substantial naval buildup in the late 1850s. The navy had, however, long been engaged in securing the nation’s borders against slave smuggling, an activity that also seemed
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The Rise of the Anti-Abortion Movement in North Dakota and the Defeat of the 1972 Initiative to Liberalize State Abortion Laws Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-09-06 NICHOLAS BAUROTH
The 1972 abortion-initiative campaign in North Dakota provides an example where elites on one side of an issue were able to provide cues and get supporters to participate in an election while the other side was unable to do so. North Dakota Right to Life through the formation of branch chapters and its work with the Catholic churches became the focus of the anti-initiative campaign. Flush with resources
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Government by Improvisation? Towards a New History of the Nineteenth-Century American State Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-09-06 R. M. BATES
Over the last thirty years, historians and historically minded political scientists have effectively overturned the long-held perception of the nineteenth-century United States as a polity defined by its lack of an effective state. By highlighting the myriad interventions of its energetic and enterprising federal government and by incorporating subnational governments and private actors and organizations
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Transnational Diffusion of Health Policy Ideas in Uruguay in the Early Twentieth Century Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-09-06 CECILIA ROSSEL, FELIPE MONESTIER
This article analyzes how policy ideas already adopted in Europe, particularly in France, were taken into consideration for the design of Uruguay’s National Public Assistance (NPA) policy. Established in 1910, the NPA was a pioneering government social policy for the time and for the region.Some have argued that the design of the NPA law followed the secular and republican model instituted in France
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Strong Language: Mathew Carey, Sensibility, and the American State, 1819–1835 Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-04-19 DREW E. VANDECREEK
Mathew Carey promoted the high tariff as a political expression of humane sentiments that relieved American workers of the misery caused by low wages and unemployment. This made him an early example of a state-builder working outside the state itself, building ideological frames and using emotional appeals to promote the expansion of state capacity. Although other aspects of his protectionism appealed
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Crack and Criminal Justice in Canton, Ohio, 1987–1999: “The Drug Problem has Created a Monster” Journal of Policy History (IF 0.222) Pub Date : 2021-04-19 WILL COOLEY
The rise of crack cocaine in the late 1980s propelled the war on drugs. The experience of Canton, Ohio, shows how the response to crack solidified mass incarceration. A declining industrial city of 84,000 people in northeast Ohio with deep-seated racial divides, it was overwhelmed by aggressive, enterprising crack dealers from outside the city. In response, politicians and residents united behind the