The Consequences of Public Policy for Democratic Citizenship: Bridging Policy Studies and Mass Politics

Abstract

Democracies, and the citizenries that stand at their center, are not natural phenomena; they are made and sustained through politics. Government policies can play a crucial role in this process, shaping the things publics believe and want, the ways citizens view themselves and others, and how they understand and act toward the political system. Yet, while political scientists have said a great deal about how publics influence policies, they know far less about the ways policies influence publics. In this article, we seek to clarify how policies, once enacted, are likely to affect political thought and action in the citizenry. Such effects are hard to locate within the standard framework of approaches to mass behavior, and they are generally ignored by program evaluators and policy analysts. To bridge this gap, we direct attention toward a long and vibrant, but underappreciated, line of inquiry we call the “political tradition” of mass behavior research. Drawing this tradition together with recent work on “policy feedback,” we outline a framework for thinking about how policies influence mass politics. The major types of such effects include defining membership; forging political cohesion and group divisions; building or undermining civic capacities; framing policy agendas, problems, and evaluations; and structuring, stimulating, and stalling political participation.

Más que la suma de las partes: análisis del Programa Hábitat Vertiente Centros Históricos en la Ciudad de México

“…Los cambios originados con la puesta en marcha de la Vertiente Centros Históricos difícilmente serán reversibles so pena de grandes costos políticos. Desde luego, la defensa de la sustentabilidad de los Centros será mantenida, pero también continuará transformando la conducta participativa ciudadana y la de los municipios, lo cual ha activado una interacción más sólida con el gobierno federal (Mettler & Soss, 2004).…”

Disjointed Innovation: The Political Economy of Digitally Mediated Institutional Reform

“…E. E. Schattschneider's 1935 study of tariff policies argued that "new policies create a new politics." Theda Skocpol (1992) and others (e.g., Heclo 1974;Mettler and Soss 2004) have made seminal contributions to our understanding of policy feedback as part of broader contributions to our understanding of state structure and capacity. Skocpol coined the term "policy feedback" to point to how "policies, once enacted, restructure subsequence political processes."…”

Labor Exclusion and the Erosion of Citizenship Responsibilities

“…Mettler and Soss (2004) divide this group into four intellectual traditions: i) a sociological tradition that explains political participation by linking it to the individual's position within social structures (Milbrath and Goel, 1977); ii) a psychological tradition that emphasizes the importance of identities, beliefs, values, and feelings (Campbell et al, 1960); iii) an economic tradition that focuses on individual self-interest (Downs, 1957); and iv) the political tradition, which explains political participation as a product constructed through the interplay of 3 See Galston (1991) and Heater (2013).…”