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Cited by 1,543Social Policy and Reform StudiesSocial and Political IssuesPolicy Transfer and Learning

Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States

HACKER, JACOB S.·2004·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.1017/s0003055404001121
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Abstract

Over the last decade, students of the welfare state have produced an impressive body of research on retrenchment, the dominant thrust of which is that remarkably few welfare states have experienced fundamental shifts. This article questions this now-conventional wisdom by reconsidering the post-1970s trajectory of the American welfare state, long considered the quintessential case of social policy stability. I demonstrate that although most programs have indeed resisted retrenchment, U.S. social policy has also offered increasingly incomplete risk protection in an era of dramatic social change. Although some of this disjuncture is inadvertent—an unintended consequence of the very political stickiness that has stymied retrenchment—I argue that the declining scope of risk protection also reflects deliberate and theoretically explicable strategies of reform adopted by welfare state opponents in the face of popular and change-resistant policies, a finding that has significant implications for the study of institutional change more broadly.

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Authors
HACKER, J. S.
Affiliations
Yale University (US)
Corresponding author
HACKER, JACOB S.
ORCID
HACKER, JACOB S.
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2004-05
Volume
98
Issue
2
Pages
243-260
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.1017/s0003055404001121
OpenAlex
W2125398298
Cited by
1,543
References
99
Citations by year
2026: 70 · 2025: 83 · 2024: 77 · 2023: 102 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 95 · 2020: 133 · 2019: 123 · 2018: 98 · 2017: 74 · 2016: 81 · 2015: 70 · 2014: 81 · 2013: 57 · 2012: 63
FWCI
137.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 51 d)
Locations
  • American Political Science Review (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Social Policy and Reform Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Political Issues
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policy Transfer and Learning
Keywords
welfare state retrenchment, social policy, risk protection, institutional change, social policy reform, United States welfare state, social change

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