
Contents
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1 Introduction 1 Introduction
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2 Institutional Arguments and Political Institutionalism 2 Institutional Arguments and Political Institutionalism
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3 Formal Political Institutions in Explanations of U.S. Policy 3 Formal Political Institutions in Explanations of U.S. Policy
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4 Policy Feedbacks and U.S. Social Policy 4 Policy Feedbacks and U.S. Social Policy
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5 Future Research 5 Future Research
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References References
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9 Political Institutions and U.S. Social Policy
Get accessEdwin Amenta is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
Amber Celina Tierney, Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA.
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Published:16 December 2013
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Abstract
United States political institutions provide a compelling account of American exceptionalism in social policy: why the United States has a social insurance system that was late to develop and remains incomplete; spends relatively little on direct social policy; and relies on indirect and private social policy that is relatively ineffective in addressing poverty, insecurity, and inequality. Formal political institutions—including the tardiness of universal suffrage, many institutional veto points, federalism, the underdevelopment of domestic administrative authority, and a political party system founded on patronage and skewed to the right—go far to explain the formation of this unusual welfare state. Feedbacks from policies, political institutions themselves, help to explain why a few U.S. social programs, notably Social Security, remain strong, and why the U.S welfare state generally remains mired in the residual liberal model and is subject to drift. Feedbacks related to the world’s most extensive military and imprisonment policies also harm social policy.
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