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41 results

Page 1 of 3

  • Backlash Politics in America's Disunited and Polarized State

  • Eric M. Patashnik
  • Journal:
    Studies in American Political Development / Volume 36 / Issue 2 / October 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    04 August 2022, pp. 151-155
    • Article
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  • The policy feedback literature developed in an era in which the level of polarization and the intensity of party competition were far lower than today. These background conditions narrowed the scope of many policy debates and facilitated the consolidation of programmatic expansions after their enactment. As a result, the feedback literature emphasized the ways that new policies build supportive constituencies and become entrenched. While the core insight that policies can generate major political repercussions remains solid, American political development (APD) scholars should pay greater attention to the role of negative feedback processes and backlash politics in an era of disunity. Based on a review of New York Times articles mentioning policy backlash between 1960 and 2019, I show that the 2010s was a period of heightened countermobilization. Backlash forces have diffused from civil rights into many other arenas—including health, trade, and immigration—due to partisan polarization, conflicts over cultural shifts, and the negative feedback from activist government itself.

  • 1 - The Evolving Textbook Congress: Polarization and Policy Making on Capitol Hill in the 21st Century

  • Edited by Jeffery A. Jenkins, University of Virginia, Eric M. Patashnik, University of Virginia
  • Book:
    Congress and Policy Making in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    05 February 2016
    Print publication:
    15 February 2016, pp 1-18

  • Summary

    In 2009, the U.S. Congress, led by House Democrats, sought to tackle the issue of climate change and pass major energy legislation. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-CA), proposed a “cap and trade” system to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that companies could emit nationally. “Emission permits” would be bought and sold in a marketplace, and the cap would be reduced over time to curb carbon dioxide gases. The ambitious bill generated significant controversy. Environmental groups lobbied for the measure while the petroleum and natural gas industries and conservative advocacy groups sought to block its passage. The bill passed in the House by a slim 219–212 vote, with just 8 Republicans in support. But, the following year, ACES died in the Senate, when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) acknowledged that he did not have the sixty votes necessary to overcome a Republican-led filibuster.

    Since 2010, President Obama has been urging the Congress to pass climate change legislation. But little has been accomplished congressionally, with meaningful policy change made more difficult since the Republicans regained majority control of the House in 2011. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama announced that he was prepared to move forward without legislative action. “If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will,” he said (Restuccia and Dixon 2013). Working through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Obama in 2014 established a new regulation that would cut carbon emissions produced by coal-burning power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Congressional Republicans were immediately up in arms about the executive “overreach” and warned of significant job losses in the coal industry. Obama made no apologies for seizing the initiative, however, and castigated Congress for failing to tackle climate change. And, in June 2014, the Supreme Court largely upheld the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, though the decision also left open the possibility of future judicial review of rules imposing limits on power plant emissions.

    On combating carbon pollution, then, national policy making in the 21st Century is being led primarily by the president with significant input from the judiciary. Individual lawmakers have certainly taken positions and made public statements, but Congress is not a central institutional player in climate-change-mitigation policy making.

Congress and Policy Making in the 21st Century
  • Edited by Jeffery A. Jenkins, Eric M. Patashnik
  • Published online:
    05 February 2016
    Print publication:
    15 February 2016
  • Congress is frequently said to be 'broken', 'dysfunctional', and 'weak', but how does the contemporary Congress really work? Does Congress have the capacity to solve major policy problems? Can it check an aggrandizing executive, oversee a powerful Federal Reserve, and represent the American people? Can Congress cope with vast changes in the American political economy, including rising income inequality? Congress and Policy Making in the 21st Century takes a fresh look at the performance of Congress in the domestic arena, focusing on issues such as immigration, health care, and the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'. With original contributions from leading scholars, this important volume examines how Congress tackles - and fails to tackle - key policy challenges in an era of growing social diversity and ideological polarization. Rich in analysis and illuminating detail, the book reveals the full complexity of the institution at work.

  • The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State

  • Eric M. Patashnik, Julian E. Zelizer
  • Journal:
    Perspectives on Politics / Volume 11 / Issue 4 / December 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 December 2013, pp. 1071-1087
    Print publication:
    December 2013

  • President Barack Obama's two signature first-term legislative victories—the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Act—are the law of the land, but the political battle over their entrenchment continues. The question now is whether these landmark reforms will be consolidated and create a new politics going forward. We develop an argument about the limits of policy feedback to illuminate the obstacles to durable liberal reform in the contemporary American state. We argue that political scientists have paid insufficient attention to the fragility of inherited policy commitments, and that the capacity of reforms to remake politics is contingent, conditional, and contested. Feedbacks are shaped not only by the internal attributes of policies, but also by the interaction between policy-specific characteristics, the strategic goals of officeholders and clientele groups, and the political forces arising from a contentious and uncertain political environment.

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