377444 AAS

Administration & Society

Reconsidering Policy 42(5) 568590

2010 SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/0095399710377444
Feedback: How Policies http://aas.sagepub.com

Affect Politics

Daniel Bland1

Abstract
Drawing on examples from the history and politics of Social Security in the
United States, this article assesses early and more recent contributions to the
policy feedback literature to clarify the meaning of this concept before sketching
a new research agenda on policy feedback. As argued, three new streams of
policy feedback scholarship have emerged since the late 1990s. Because these
new research streams have seldom been discussed together, this article makes
a direct contribution to the ongoing social science debate about the nature and
the role of policy feedback in advanced industrial societies.

Keywords
public policy, policy feedback, institutional change, political behavior, Social
Security, United States

Introduction
Although the idea that existing policies can have major effects on politics and
policy development is hardly new (Lowi, 1964), the past two decades witnessed
a rapid expansion of the policy feedback scholarship. Associated with the histori-
cal institutionalist tradition (J. L. Campbell, 2004; Parsons, 2007; Pierson, 1993,
1994; Skocpol, 1992; Thelen, 1999; Weir, Orloff, & Skocpol, 1988), policy
feedback is a prominent concept in both political science and policy analysis.

1
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

Corresponding Author:
Daniel Bland, School of Public Policy, Diefenbaker Canada Centre, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
S7N 5B8
Email: daniel.beland@usask.ca
Bland 569

Importantly, this historical institutionalist concept has nothing to do with system

theory and the work of scholars like David Easton (1965), who wrote about
feedback but not policy feedback.1 In fact, historical institutionalism emerged
largely in opposition to system theory by stressing the need to bring the state
back in (Evans, Rueschemeyer, & Skocpol, 1985). In the historical institutionalist
literature, the concept of policy feedback refers to the impact of existing policies
on politics and policy development (Pierson, 1993). In other words, at the broadest
level, policy feedback simply refers to how policies affect politics over time.
More than 15 years after the publication of Paul Piersons seminal World Politics
article on policy feedback (Pierson, 1993), the time has come to revisit this widely
debated concept.
Drawing on examples from the history and politics of Social Security in the
United States, this article assesses early and more recent contributions to the
policy feedback literature in order to clarify the meaning of this concept before
sketching a new research agenda on policy feedback that stresses the need to
explain both continuity and change. As argued, in addition to the early policy
feedback research focusing on state building, interest group formation, and on
lock-in effects, three new streams of policy feedback scholarship have emerged
since the late 1990s. These streams concern the relationship between public and
private policies, the interaction between policy feedback and political behavior,
and the role of ideational and symbolic policy legacies, respectively. Because
these new research streams have seldom been discussed together, this article
makes a direct contribution to the ongoing social science debate on the nature
and the role of policy feedback in advanced industrial societies. As for the choice
of Social Security history and politics to illuminate general claims about policy
feedback, it is appropriate because of the programs long historySocial Security
has existed since 1935and the wealth of literature about it, which is explored
below.2 The scope of this social science literature makes it easier to assess how
major claims about policy feedback may improve our understanding of politics
and policy development.
Three main sections comprise this article. First, three early approaches to
policy feedback are discussed in reference to Social Security history and politics.
Second, this case is used to illuminate three more recent research streams about
policy feedback. Third, the conclusion section formulates an agenda for future
research about policy feedback that stresses the need to focus both on continuity
and change. This is crucial in order to avoid an overly deterministic vision of
how existing policies influence politics and policy making. As argued, when
located beyond such a vision, the policy feedback literature can help address
the issue of institutional change.
570 Administration & Society 42(5)

Early Perspectives on Policy Feedback

As mentioned above, much of the early policy feedback literature stems from
historical institutionalism, a theoretical approach that explores the impact of
political and policy institutions on political behavior and policy making
(Amenta, 1998; J. L. Campbell, 2004; Immergut, 1998; Lecours, 2005; Maioni,
1998; Myles & Pierson, 2001; Orloff, 1993; Orren & Skowronek, 2004; Peters,
Pierre, & King, 2005; Pierson, 1994, 2004; Skocpol, 1992; Skowronek, 1982;
Steinmo, 1993; Steinmo, Thelen, & Longstreth, 1992; R. K. Weaver, 2000; R.
K. Weaver & Rockman, 1993; Weir, Orloff, & Skocpol, 1988). Recognizing
the autonomy of political actors, this approach directly takes into account the
impact of existing policies on both politics and policy development (Hall &
Taylor, 1996; Immergut, 1998; Orloff, 1993; Steinmo, Thelen, & Longstreth,
1992; R. K. Weaver & Rockman, 1992). In the broadest sense, as suggested
above, the concept of policy feedback refers to this impact of previously enacted
policies on future political behavior and policy choices. In other words, policy
feedback is a temporal concept that points to the fact that over time, policy
can shape politics (Lowi, 1964). An early discussion of what would later
become known as policy feedback is the work of Hugh Heclo (1974) on policy
learning, which directly influenced a number of historical institutionalist
scholars (Hall, 1993; Pierson, 1993; Skocpol, 1992, p. 71). This work stresses
the ways in which state bureaucrats and policy experts draw lessons from exist-
ing policies to inform the decision-making process (Heclo, 1974). Today, the
literature on policy learning transcends both historical institutionalism and the
concept of policy feedback (Bennett & Howlett, 1992; King & Hansen, 1999;
Rose, 2004; Sabatier, 1988). The same remark applies to the scholarship on the
racial and gendered implications of public policies, which has taken a life of its
own (Brown, 1999; Gordon, 1994; Lieberman, 1998; Mettler, 1998; OConnor,
Orloff, & Shaver, 1999; Quadagno, 1994). Leaving aside these two important
yet increasingly autonomous research streams, we identify three focal points
in the early policy feedback literature: state-building, interest groups, and
lock-in effects.

State-Building
For Theda Skocpol (1992, p. 58), the expansion of state capacities is one major
way policies generate feedback effects. As she puts it, because of the official
efforts made to implement new policies using new or existing administrative
arrangements, policies transform or expand the capacities of the state. They
Bland 571

therefore change the administrative possibilities for official initiatives in the

future, and affect later prospects for policy implementation (p. 58). Under specific
circumstances, existing policies even favor the emergence of powerful bureau-
cratic constituencies that can later play a major political role in policy making.
A striking case of this type of policy feedback is the impact of Social Security
on the development of federal administrative capacities and the advent of a
bureaucratic lobby located within the federal government that would actively
promote both the preservation and the expansion of that federal program (Balogh,
1988; Berkowitz, 2003; Cates, 1983; Derthick, 1979; Freeman, 1988; Schieber
& Shoven, 1999; Tynes, 1996; C. L. Weaver, 1982). For example, during the
Second World War, when Social Security faced ideological and political threats
emanating from other federal actors and agencies, the Social Security Board
(SSB) successfully fought to protect the institutional integrity of their pro-
gram at a time when political support for it remained limited (Cates, 1983;
Derthick, 1979). From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the Social Security
Administration (SSA)which replaced the Social Security Board in 1946
played a central role in promoting the expansion of the federal program, notably
through the indirect control it exerted over the advisory councils on Social
Security (Derthick, 1979; Schieber & Shoven, 1999). With the help of sym-
pathetic members of key congressional committees like Wilbur Mills (Zelizer,
1998), SSA officials such as Robert M. Ball (1914-2008) sometimes proved
instrumental in convincing members of Congress and other major political actors
to support the expansion of Social Security and the creation of new programs
like health insurance for the elderly (Medicare), which became a reality in 1965
(Berkowitz, 2003; Derthick, 1979). Although other demographic, economic,
and political factors contributed to the postwar expansion of Social Security
(Bland, 2005; Schieber & Shoven, 1999), it would be hard to explain this trend
without understanding the transformation of the SSA into an influential bureau-
cratic lobby (Berkowitz, 2003; Derthick, 1979).
Beginning in the mid-1970s, factors like the administrative problems stem-
ming from both the implementation of the newly created Supplemental Security
Income (Derthick, 1990) and the shift from the politics of expansion to the
politics of austerity (Pierson, 1994; for a comparative critique of Piersons
claims about bureaucrats see Marier, 2005) helped weaken the SSAs political
influence. Moreover, since Balls departure in 1973, all the Commissioners
have been political appointees rather than career bureaucrats strongly identify-
ing with Social Security as a program, a situation that has eroded the institutional
autonomy and the political clout of the SSA (Bland, 2005, pp. 160-161).
Interestingly, during the three decades following his departure, Ball remained
a major figure in the debate about the future of Social Security (Ball, 1998;
572 Administration & Society 42(5)

Berkowitz, 2003). The enduring political influence of this former career bureau-
crat pointed back to the years when the SSA aggressively promoted the program
without which this organization would not have been created in the first place.
Considering this, the death of Ball in early 2008 truly marked the end of an
era (Sullivan, 2008). More generally, the crucial political role of the SSB/SSA
during and well after the Second World War provides ground to the claim that
policies can expand state capacities while creating new bureaucratic constitu-
encies that can later influence politics and policy development. Overall, as
this example shows, public policies may stimulate the development of influ-
ential bureaucratic constituencies that can have a direct impact on politics and
policy making.

Interest Groups
Another major type of policy feedback discussed in the early historical insti-
tutionalist literature is how new policies affect the social identities, goals,
and capabilities of groups that subsequently struggle or ally in politics
(Skocpol, 1992, p. 58). This type of feedback effect concerns primarily the
impact of existing public policies on interest group politics (Pierson, 1993,
pp. 598-605). In Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, for example, Skocpol (1992,
p. 59) explains how the expansion of Civil War pensions favored the emergence
of veteran organizations aimed at fighting for more generous federal benefits.
In general, the nature of existing policy legacies affects interest group forma-
tion and mobilization (Pierson, 1993, p. 599). For instance, large social pro-
grams are more likely to favor the emergence of massive constituencies
represented by well-funded interest group organizations that actively support
these programs (Pierson, 1994).
The fact that quasi-universal social insurance schemes like Social Security
lead to the emergence of robust constituencies has convinced authors like Skocpol
(1990) to support such schemes at the expense of targeted programs for
the poor, which are believed to generate narrowerand politically vulnerable
constituencies. Although the idea that programs for the poor are poor pro-
grams applies well to the Aid for Family with Dependent Children (AFDC)
ended as a consequence of the 1996 welfare reform (R. K. Weaver, 2000), scholars
should avoid making broad generalizations about the relationship between the
general nature of a program and its political robustness. In the United States,
programs that target the poor can generate much political support, as is the case
for Medicaid (Howard, 2007). Although the level of targeting is a potential
determinant of the relationship between existing policies and interest group
Bland 573

formation, broad generalizations about program sustainability based exclusively

on an assessment of this relationship are often problematic.
Regarding Social Security development in the United States, a remark-
able example of the impact of existing policy legacies on interest group
formation is the emergence of the modern gray lobby in the 1960s and 1970s
(Pratt, 1976, 1993) and, more specifically, the rise of the American Associa-
tion for Retired People (AARP), which has become one of the largestand
wealthiestinterest group organizations in the United States (Morris, 1996;
Pierson, 1993, p. 600). An indirect yet major effect of Social Security develop-
ment on interest group formation has been the transformation of retirement
into a widespread and quasi universal institution in post-war U.S. society
(Graebner, 1980). From this perspective, the expansion of the program during
the post-war era helped generalize a social category (the retired people) that
the AARP and other organizations would later represent, both within and outside
the policy arena.3 Although the development of Social Security did not itself
create the AARP, it helped bring about social and political conditions like the
universalization of retirement that facilitated the expansion of the gray lobby.
Moreover, as Pierson points out, in the related field of health care for the elderly,
gaps in private health insurance and, later, Medicare coverage provided the
AARP with a niche for activity (Pierson, 1994, p. 40).4
Created in the late 1950s, the AARP became increasingly involved in policy
debates about Medicare and Social Security in the 1980s (Morris, 1996). Unable
to prevent the enactment of the 1983 amendments to the Social Security Act it
had strongly opposed (Light, 1995), the AARP has since gained much legislative
experience and policy expertise. In recent years, this organization played a central
role during the enactment of the 2003 Medicare reform, which it supported
(Novelli, 2003), as well as the 2005 debate on Social Security privatization, which
it successfully opposed as part of a broad interest group coalition (Rother, 2005).
Although it is sometimes hard to assess the concrete influence of the AARP on
policy making, many elected officials greatly fear this organization, which is seen
to be powerful, at least when issues like Medicare and Social Security are con-
cerned (personal interviews with congressional staffers and a Republican member
of Congress, February 2008). Overall, the postwar expansion of Social Security
and the creation of Medicare have helped stimulate the rise of the AARP as one
of the largest interest group organizations in the United States (Morris, 1996).
This case perfectly illustrates how the development of a specific policy can feed
interest group formation that, in turn, affects politics and policy making. This
does not mean that interest groups are the mere product of existing policies;
instead, the claim is that such policies can stimulate interest group formation and
activity, alongside other factors. Overall, under specific circumstances, existing
574 Administration & Society 42(5)

policies can create favorable conditions for interest group mobilization, as these
policies constitute targets for interest mobilization (Skocpol, 1992).

Lock-In Effects
The concept of lock-in effect refers to a widely debated policy feedback mecha-
nism that helps explain how policies affect politics. For instance, drawing on
the work of Nobel Prizewinning economist Douglass North (1990), Paul
Pierson (1993, 1994, 2000, 2004) has explored how existing policies create
lock-in effects that can constrain future policy development. Policies may
create incentives that encourage the emergence of elaborate social and economic
networks, greatly increasing the cost of adopting once-possible alternatives
and inhibiting exit from a current policy path. Individuals make important
commitments in response to certain types of government action. These com-
mitments, in turn, may vastly increase the disruption caused by new policies,
effectively locking in previous decisions (Pierson, 1993, p. 608). For Pierson
(2000), once enacted, policies generating massive lock-in effects tend to develop
according to a path-dependent logic. From a political standpoint, this suggests
that elected officials seeking to dismantle, replace, or transform such policies
are likely to face not only resistance from interest groups and existing bureau-
cratic constituencies but major transition costs that could make path-departing
change both expensive and politically perilous. Following this logic, on aver-
age, newer, less entrenched policies are more politically vulnerable than older,
more established policies that have already generated profound social and
economic underpinnings (Pierson, 1994).
The history of old-age pension schemes like Social Security features inter-
esting examples of the impact of lock-in effects on politics and policy develop-
ment (Pierson, 1993, p. 609; 1994). In advanced industrial countries, mature
pay-as-you-go (PAYG) public pension schemes such as Social Security tend
to be hard to reform because the implementation of the fully funded model
advocated by conservative experts and politicians creates what is known as the
double payment problem. A shift from PAYG to capitalization (or pre-funding)
requires current workers to continue financing the previous generations retire-
ment while simultaneously saving for their own. The double payment problem
. . . is likely to present an insurmountable barrier to privatization or the capi-
talization of existing public schemes (Myles & Pierson, 2001, p. 313). In the
United States, Social Security is a mature PAYG program that has created
powerful lock-in effects since its postwar expansion. Because the economic
well-being of so many elderly citizens depends on Social Security benefits,
there is a strong political consensus around the idea that comprehensive reform
Bland 575

should not directly affect existing beneficiaries (Light, 1995). This situation
has seriously constrained the policy options available to those who seek to carve
personal savings accounts out of the Social Security payroll tax. Because of
the imperative to use a significant portion of the federal payroll tax to pay
benefits to existing Social Security recipients, full privatization is seldom under-
stood as a realistic policy alternative, which is why partial privatization (the
channeling of only a fraction of the payroll tax money to personal accounts)
has become a much more common policy alternative since the mid-1990s
(Bland, 2005, p. 167). However, even partial privatization is a problematic
policy alternative because of the transition costs involved in the partial shift
from PAYG to a system of fully funded personal accounts. Ironically, conserva-
tives like President George W. Bush who argue that partial privatization is the
only way to improve the long-term financial situation of Social Security in the
context of population aging have to address the fact that this policy alternative
could well increase future costs generated by the program rather than reducing
them. This fact was used extensively by Democrats to attack the Social Security
privatization initiative President Bush launched immediately after his 2004
reelection (Stevenson, 2004). This discussion about the U.S. debate on Social
Security privatization provides ground to the claim that lock-in effects like the
double-payment problem can have a direct impact on politics and policy devel-
opment (Bland, 2005).
But such a discussion should not lead to the conclusion that lock-in effects
last forever and that path-departing change is impossible in the absence of
external shocks like wars and economic depressions (Thelen, 2004). Although
policies do impact politics, the reverse remains true, and actors challenging
well-entrenched policy legacies can for instance pursue incremental strategies
that, in the long run, can lead to path-departing change (Hacker, 2004; Palier,
2000; Streeck & Thelen, 2005; Thelen, 2004). This cautionary remark is essen-
tial, as scholars should avoid an overly deterministic vision of lock-in effects,
according to which path dependence constitutes the only major form of policy
development outside seemingly rare episodes of radical change (Thelen, 2004).
Concerning the issue of change, the concept of negative policy feedback has
great explanatory potential (R. K. Weaver, 2010). According to R. K. Weaver
(2010), the main challenge for students of public policy is to recognize the role
of negative feedbacks that can facilitate institutional change, in the long run.5
From this perspective, lock-in effects are only one aspect of the story, in the
sense that policies sometimes create negative legacies (e.g., unsustainable fiscal
costs) that weaken such policies over time while having the potential to trigger
path-departing change. In a recent contribution, R. K. Weaver (2010) uses the
example of pension reform to show how negative policy feedbacks and
576 Administration & Society 42(5)

legacies can bring about regime change. For example, in European countries
like Germany, Italy, and Sweden, fiscal pressures stemming from the large
pension programs developed during the postwar era have helped pave the
way to path-departing pension reforms in a changing demographic context
(R. K. Weaver, 2010). Following the above remarks, however, the analysis of
negative feedback effects should pay close attention to the role of actors involved
in the policy-making process. Policy feedbacks are never purely mechanistic
processes that explain the nature of policy development but factors that shape
the environment in which political actors struggle to shape policy outcomes.

Recent Perspectives on Policy Feedback

In recent years, beyond the turn to negative feedbacks, the policy feedback lit-
erature has expanded in three additional directions. First, scholars have attempted
to apply this concept to private benefits and institutions. Second, a number of
social scientists have systematically bridged for the first time the literatures on
policy feedback and on political behavior. Finally, political sociologists have
explored the ideational and symbolic components of policy feedback. The
discussion of these three research streams underscores their key contribution
to the policy feedback literature.

Private Institutions
Since the late 1990s, a growing number of U.S. scholars have analyzed the
political relationship between public and private public policies, with a specific
focus on social programs (Bland & Gran, 2008; Bland & Hacker, 2004;
Bland & Shinkawa, 2007; Hacker, 2002, 2004; Howard, 1997, 2007; Gott-
schalk, 2000; Klein, 2003). Although the study of the relationship between
public and private policies is hardly new (Berkowitz & McQuaid, 1980; Esping-
Andersen, 1990; Gilbert & Gilbert, 1989; Quadagno, 1988; Stevens, 1988;
Titmuss, 1963), this recent scholarship directly expands our understanding of
policy feedback. As far as policy feedback is concerned, within this recent
scholarship, the work of Jacob Hacker (2002, 2004) is especially meaningful.
In fact, a key contribution of this historical institutionalist scholar is the explora-
tion of policy feedbacks from private social programs, which are replaced in
the broader context of the publicprivate mix. From this perspective, when
private benefits are widely relied upon by citizens, they may impact political
mobilisation and public expectations in much the same way that widely dis-
tributed public benefits do, creating strong political incentives for the main-
tenance or encouragement of existing private networks of social provision
Bland 577

(Bland & Hacker, 2004, p. 46). Drawing on this basic idea, Hacker has shown
how the timing and sequence of the development of both private and public
benefits have strongly affected the history of the federal welfare state since the
New Deal (Hacker, 2002). More recently, drawing on the work of Kathleen
Thelen (2004), Hacker has put forward the concept of policy drift to explain
low-profile and incremental forms of institutional change made possible by a
strong reliance on private social benefits. For him, the restructuring of such
benefits is a low-profile but crucial form of institutional change that can sig-
nificantly influence both politics and the everyday life of citizens despite the
absence of legislative revisions affecting public programs (Hacker, 2004).
In his book The Divided Welfare State, Hacker (2002) refers to Social
Security and other U.S. social programs to back his theoretical claims about
the role of publicprivate interactions in welfare state development. First,
regarding Social Security, he shows that as opposed to what happened in the
field of health care reform, private pension benefits expanded only after the
advent of a major federal program (Social Security), which allowed it to serve
as a foundation for their expansion during the postwar era (Hacker, 2002; see
also Bland & Hacker, 2004). Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, this integration
of public and private pensions increased the apparent legitimacy of Social
Security among employers (Hacker & Pierson, 2002). In contrast, in the field
of health care reform, large-scale private benefits emerged before the enact-
ment of Medicare, which built on the top of existing private benefits. Such
private benefits created massive constituencies and vested interests that accord-
ing to Hacker, made it more difficult for federal policy makers to push for
national health insurance (Hacker, 2002). Second, as Hacker argues, in the
past two decades, the decline of defined-benefit pensions has fueled the con-
servative push for Social Security privatization by weakening the institutional
and ideological base of the program. As corporations have shifted to more
individualized plans, the explicit links between the public and private systems
have steadily eroded, undermining some of the self-reinforcing mechanisms
that secured Social Securitys privileged position in American retirement pro-
vision. Once tightly integrated with a program that offered a tremendous deal
to all, private plans now increasingly stand alone (Hacker, 2002, p. 323).
Consequently, changes in private pension benefits affect the politics of Social
Security, as they potentially weaken its political base while legitimizing priva-
tization, which is about generalizing the defined-contribution model that has
become increasingly dominant in private benefits since the 1980s (Ghilarducci,
2008; Hacker, 2004; Klein, 2003; Sass, 1997). This recognition of the impact
of private schemes on the politics of public policy should not hide the fact that
public provisions such as tax incentives contribute to the development of these
578 Administration & Society 42(5)

schemes in the first place (Hacker, 2002; Howard, 1997, 2007; Klein, 2003;
Stevens, 1988). Because it points to the major role of such complex public
private interactions in policy development, the work of scholars like Hacker
has helped broaden our understanding of how policies impact politics.

Political Participation
Since the late 1990s, scholars like Joe Soss (1999; Soss & Schram, 2007), Suzanne
Mettler (2002; Mettler & Welsh, 2004), and Andrea Campbell (2002, 2003,
2008) have explored the relationship between existing policy legacies and politi-
cal participation (for an overview: Anderson, 2009; Mettler & Soss, 2004). The
primary focus here is not on interest group formation but on the electoral and
political participation of individuals directly affected by concrete public poli-
cies. This means that we move from interest group analysis to electoral sociology
and the study of individual behavior as related to specific policy legacies.
Because it is centered on a discussion about U.S. Social Security, it is relevant
to focus on Campbells work (2002, 2003), which draws on both the historical
institutionalist work on policy feedback and the quantitative scholarship on
electoral behavior to show that politics can influence the voting and partici-
pation patterns of elderly citizens. In her book How Policies Make Citizens,
Campbell provides much empirical ground to the claim that elderly citizens
form an increasingly influential and politically active constituency, and that the
existence of Social Security directly affects the political behavior of the elderly
(Campbell, 2003). According to her, this program has boosted the elderlys
level of electoral participation while reducing the traditional gap between low-
and high-income seniors. As Campbell (2002) puts it in an earlier article: The
role of Social Security helps explain the high rates of political participation
by seniors. Among nonseniors, the extremely modest activity levels of the less
affluent pull down the overall participation rate. In contrast, low-income seniors
participate at higher rates than would be predicted by their resource levels
because of their dependence on Social Security (p. 571). Moreover, Campbells
quantitative analysis suggests that this stronger participation influences the
politics of Social Security in major ways. Through letters they send to the
Congress and other forms of political participation, the elderly convey clear
messages to federal elected officials about the fate of Social Security and other
public policies that directly affect them. Elderly support for these programs is
clear, and conservatives disliking them must adopt a cautious approach when
seeking to abolish or transform them (Campbell, 2003).
The originality of Campbells work lies in the fact that she goes beyond
the well-known claim that existing social and economic programs can stimulate
Bland 579

the development of topdown mobilization processes associated with interest

group politics (Pierson, 1993; Skocpol, 1992). Instead of focusing on how Social
Security favored the emergence of the modern gray lobby, especially the
AARP, Campbell shows that existing policies can have strong effects on the
bottomup political participation of individuals (A. L. Campbell, 2002,
p. 572). Drawing on the work of Seymour Martin Lipset (1959/1981), she argues
that state programs that directly affect the life of citizens can encourage them
to develop an interest in political matters and participate in the electoral process.
Individual actors who see a visible effect of government policy on their well-
beingincluding government employees, farmers, veterans, and . . . Social
Security recipientshave a great stake in government activity and participate
at higher rates than would otherwise be expected (A. L. Campbell, 2002,
p. 572). Her robust quantitative analysis suggests that public policies that
explicitly affect the economic well-being of citizens have the greatest chance
to increase their levels of political participation. Overall, Campbells work on
the interaction between policy development and political participation is a
major contribution to the policy feedback literature.
Something that remains implicit in Campbells work and that requires further
analysis is the idea that existing policies only stimulate the political participa-
tion of citizens who are aware that such policies have a significant effect on
them. In countries like the United States, where complex publicprivate interac-
tions are widespread, it is harder for ordinary citizens to grasp the effects of
public policies like tax incentives and regulations on the private benefits they
may strongly depend on for their economic security (e.g., Hacker, 2004; Howard,
2007). For example, the hidden welfare state (Howard, 1997) composed of
low-profile tax benefits and regulations affecting the development of private
social schemes is so complicated that as the expression suggests, many citizens
know little about it, which makes it much harder for them to mobilize in order
to reform it to their advantage. Future scholarship could tackle this relationship
between indirect state action, the reliance on private providers, and the political
participation of those affected by the low-profile, publicprivate policies.

Ideational and Symbolic Legacies

Since the late 1990s, a number of scholars have further extended our under-
standing of policy feedbacks by stressing the ideational and symbolic effects
of existing policies on politics and policy making (Brooks & Manza, 2007,
pp. 102-106; Lynch, 2006, p. 199; Pedriana & Stryker, 1997; Steensland, 2006,
2008; Stryker & Wald, 2009). To a certain extent, such a literature is related
to the more traditional scholarship on the relationship between policy legacies
580 Administration & Society 42(5)

and learning processes (Hall, 1993; Pierson, 1993). Yet, although it does not
always systematically refer to the concept of policy feedback, this recent lit-
erature is innovative because it offers detailed analyses of how ideas and sym-
bolic categories grounded in existing policy legacies can influence legislative
outcomes while empowering (or weakening) the actors who draw on these ideas
and categories. For example, in a recent book about the U.S. welfare debate
during the late 1960s and the 1970s, Brian Steensland (2008, p. 238) shows that
President Nixons Family Assistance Plan (FAP) came close to being enacted
but the fact that it brought into the same program categories of the poor who
had been previously treated as undeserving and mixed them with deserving
populations considerably weakened support for it while providing opponents
with culturally resonant ideological weapons they mobilized against FAP. For
this author, existing social assistance programs featured cultural categories such
as deserving poor and undeserving poor that informed the perceptions of
the available policy alternatives. Hence, because FAP would have provided
benefits to both the deserving and the undeserving poor under the same program,
many actors saw it as a welfare scheme that would contaminate the deserv-
ing poor. According to Steensland (2008), this symbolic pollution grounded
in existing ideational policy legacies weakened support for FAP, which largely
explains its ultimate demise.6
The history of U.S. Social Security provides several examples of how the
ideas and the symbolic categories grounded in existing policies can have a
significant impact on politics and policy development. In her book, For All
These Rights, for example, historian Jennifer Klein (2003, pp. 95, 98) shows
that the ideology of security associated with the Social Security Act and the
concept of social insurance diffused across the country during the late 1930s
and the 1940s, which affected the discourse and the behavior of employers
and insurance companies, who began using the language of economic security
to frame the private benefits they offered. Ironically, the development of Social
Security provided a symbolic rationale for the expansion of private social
benefits (Klein, 2003).7 These remarks point to the relationship between the
literature on policyprivate interactions discussed above and the recent schol-
arship on ideational and symbolic policy feedback.
To take a more recent example, the language and symbolic categories associ-
ated with Social Security have played a significant role in the above-mentioned
privatization debate. For example, the idea that Social Security is a social insur-
ance program that creates rock-solid social rights derived from contributions
(the payroll tax) has been used by experts and political actors opposed to partial
privatization and major cuts in benefits. In this debate, the word security in
Social Security takes a strong symbolic and political meaning, as opponents of
Bland 581

privatization depict this policy alternative as a gamble (Altman, 2005) and a

likely source of increased poverty and insecurity among the elderly (Aaron &
Reischauer, 1998; Ball, 1998; Diamond & Orszag, 2003; Skidmore, 1999;
White, 2001). For instance, during the 2005 privatization debate, the Senate
Democratic Caucus posted a page on their website where the letters IN are
inserted in front of the word Security in Social Security. Below the Social
In-Security title, the webpage makes the message even clearer: Social Security
to Social Insecurity: How Will You Lose Under Bush Privatization Plan (Senate
Democratic Caucus, 2005). This example shows how the language of security in
which the popular federal program is explicitly rooted has become a prominent
ideological tool in the politics of privatization, seven decades after the enactment
of the Social Security Act. Overall, this example points to the logic of symbolic
policy feedback, a promising new concept, at least if scholars follow Steenslands
(2008) lead to demonstrate how cultural ideas grounded in existing policy
legacies can directly affect political and legislative decisions.

Conclusion
This article has identified and assessed the contribution of six distinct but
interrelated policy feedback research streams. Although they each stress the
impact of existing policies on politics and policy development, these streams
focus on six issues, respectively: state building, interest group formation,
lock-in effects, the relationship between public and private policies, the inter-
action between policy feedback and electoral behavior, and, finally, the role
of ideational and symbolic policy legacies. Although these six issues are related
in the real world, it is useful to draw an analytical line between them to grasp
the multiple faces of policy feedback in contemporary societies. The concept
of policy feedback refers to a wide range of processes, and it is crucial to
understand its multiple faces while adopting a clear definition of it, such as
the one formulated at the beginning of this article. Although policy feedback
is an expansive concept, we should recognize that not all politics is about
policy feedback and that, in some contexts, new policies emerge without being
at least in part the product of existing policies. For example, as Edwin Amenta
(1998, p. 35) argues, the focus on work-related relief programs during the early
New Deal was not the direct consequence of existing federal policies, but the
result of bureaucratic and institutional processes that are not centered on policy
feedback. For the concept of policy feedback to remain useful from an analyti-
cal standpoint, we should recognize that politics and policy development are
not always about policy feedback.
Beyond these cautionary remarks, the six policy feedback research streams
identified above make a unique contribution to our understanding of policy
582 Administration & Society 42(5)

issues like Social Security history and politics. This is true not only of the early
scholarship discussed above but of the three most recent sets of contributions
this article has identified. Interestingly, although the first three components of
the policy feedback literature (state capacity, interest groups, and lock-in effects)
are closely related and discussed together in the work of authors like Pierson
(1993, 1994), the three more recent research streams have largely developed
independently from one another. One of the contributions of this article is to
stress this problem and call for an explicit dialog between students of public
private interactions, of political participation, and of ideational and symbolic
policy legacies. As suggested above, the issues raised by these scholars intersect.
For example, if there is a clear link between political participation and the
development of public social programs (Campbell, 2002, 2003), beyond general
remarks about subterranean politics (Hacker, 2004), the relationship between
private benefits and political participation remains understudied, especially
when quantitative research on electoral behavior is concerned. As suggested
above, future research on policy feedback and political behavior could address
this issue and fill a major gap in the literature.
Another route future research on policy feedback could take is the systematic
exploration of the relationship between the material, the institutional, and the
ideational types of feedback effect. As Craig Parsons (2007) argues, research-
ers should draw analytical lines between such types of causal factors before
attempting to combine them, if necessary. What some of the current policy
feedback literature suffers the most from is a lack of analytical clarity about
the respective role ofand the interaction betweenthe types of causal mecha-
nisms through which policies influence politics and policy making. For exam-
ple, are lock-in effects purely material and/or institutional in nature, or do they
have an ideational and symbolic dimension? In other words, can one describe
ideas and symbols in terms of lock-in effects? The work of scholars like Mark
Blyth (2002), John L. Campbell (2004), Robert H. Cox (2004), Frank Dobbin
(1994), and Peter Hall (1993) suggests that ideas create lock-in effects of their
own that interact with institutional and material feedback effects. Future schol-
arship should further clarify the causal relationship between such distinct types
of lock-in and feedback effects.
Finally, beyond creating a rigorous dialog between the above literature
streams, future research on policy feedback should explicitly reject overly rigid
views about path dependence in order to further explore the relationship between
policy feedback and institutional change, including incremental change.
This crucial discussion has already begun (e.g., Bland, 2009; Blyth, 2002;
J. L. Campbell, 2004; A. L. Campbell & Morgan, 2007; Clemens & Cook,
1999; Cox, 2001; Hacker, 2004; Hansen & King, 2001; Lieberman, 2002;
Bland 583

Patashnik & Zelizer, 2009; Peters, Pierre, & King, 2005; Pierson, 2004;
Schmidt, in press; Thelen, 2004; R. K. Weaver, 2010). Yet several particular
issues deserve closer attention. For example, what is the relationship between
the agency of actors, existing policy legacies, and institutional change?
Although it is clear that existing policy legacies affect the behavior of actors,
there is evidence that under specific circumstances, for example, a major
increase in economic and political uncertainty, actors can embrace new ideas
that contradict existing policy legacies, which can favor path-departing insti-
tutional change (Blyth, 2002). This remark leads to another major question:
How do such ideas and the actors carrying them interact with existing policy
legacies to produce major institutional change? Overall, what are the condi-
tions under which existing policy legacies (ideational, institutional, or material)
can favor or hinder path-departing change? These are broad questions that
future scholarship on policy feedback should systematically address. As Pierson
(2004) suggests, the factors that explain continuity should also account for
change. This is why, when seeking to explain continuity and change, scholars
could draw on the ever-expanding policy feedback literature. It is hoped
that by mapping and assessing that literature, this article will help inform future
research about continuity and change in policy development.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Angela Kempf, Michael Kpessa, Andr Lecours, and
the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Notes
1. In his seminal 1993 review essay on policy feedback, for example, Paul Pierson
(1993) does not cite Easton once.
2. For a systematic political history of Social Security that draws on the historical
institutionalist tradition, see Bland (2005).
3. The first gray lobby in the United Statesthe Townsend Planemerged just
before the implementation of Social Security in the second half of the 1930s,
which is a reminder that not all constituencies are related to feedback effects from
existing policies. However, the Townsend Movement was neither an interest group
nor a service provider like the AARP, but rather a social movement that declined
as Social Security expanded (Amenta, 2006).
4. For a comparison between the American and the French gray lobby see Bland
and Durandal (2003).
5. On negative feedbacks, see also Patashnik and Zelizer (2009) and Skocpol (1992).
6. Feminist scholars have long explored the relationship between cultural processes
and social programs: Bland (2009), Padamsee (2009), Orloff and Palier (2009).
584 Administration & Society 42(5)

7. To add to the irony, when designing Social Security in 1934 (Committee on

Economic Security), the FDR administration had explicitly borrowed actuarial
metaphors and techniques from the private sector (Richards, 1994).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research
Chairs Program.

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Bio
Daniel Bland is Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Professor at the Johnson-
Shoyama School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan campus. A political
sociologist studying social policy from an historical, political, and comparative per-
spective, he has published eight books and more than 50 articles in scholarly journals
like Comparative Political Studies, Governance, and Journal of Public Policy. To find
more about his work please visit www.danielbeland.org.