The Policy State: An American Predicament

by Karen Orren, Stephen Skowronek

Policy is government’s ready response to changing times, the key to its successful adaptation. It tackles problems as they arise, from foreign relations and economic affairs to race relations and family affairs. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek take a closer look at this well-known reality of modern governance. In The Policy State they point out that policy is not the only way in which America was governed historically, and they describe the transformation that occurred as policy took over more and more of the work of government, emerging as the raison d’être of the state’s operation.

Rather than analyze individual policies to document this change, Orren and Skowronek examine policy’s effect on legal rights and the formal structure of policy-making authority. Rights and structure are the principal elements of government that historically constrained policy and protected other forms of rule. The authors assess the emergence of a new “policy state,” in which rights and structure shed their distinctive characteristics and take on the attributes of policy.

Orren and Skowronek address the political controversies swirling around American government as a consequence of policy’s expanded domain. On the one hand, the policy state has rendered government more flexible, responsive, and inclusive. On the other, it has mangled government’s form, polarized its politics, and sowed deep distrust of its institutions. The policy state frames an American predicament: policy has eroded the foundations of government, even as the policy imperative pushes us ever forward, into an uncertain future.

Genres: History

272 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2017

About the author

Karen Orren is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors here attempt an admittedly difficult task, a new overview of the growth of the American state and the problems of American government. They posit that since the founding, a state of "rights" and "structure" has been replaced by a state focused on "policy." They define policy as a state commitment to a designated goal, on behalf of some group, with set guidelines, and show that the more and more policy has indeed eroded traditional ideals.

Since policy aims to accomplish clear goals, it overrides rights and structures when those stand in its way. If the goal is, for instance, collective bargaining for labor, the National Labor Relations Board is required to mediate groups, facilitate grievances, and grant power to labor unions. This means breaking down the traditional tripartite structure of government, and it means removing certain rights from people, such as to a jury trial. Unlike many conservative commentators, however, the authors don't focus on just how business's rights suffered, but how once the workers' rights became subject to legislation and administration, their rights became more tenuous. By the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, labor unions too became subject to unfair labor practices prosecutions. The trajectory in fact shows the movement of rights as "trumps" as Dworkin claims they are, to rights as "chips" in the policy state, or rights that are just temporary abilities to negotiate, always subject to manipulation, without firm grounding.

The ultimate problem here is that while the argument is presented as original, it is just the old conservative critique of interventionist government in new clothes. State intervention tends to break down traditional rights and structures, it tends to expand the parameters of government and shrink the domain of the private individual, it makes politics more dangerous and extreme, Progressivism in particular has enlarged the presidency and shrank Congress, and so forth. The authors sometimes have a distinctive take on this, such as their "policy auras," idea, about how some legal and constitutional debates stay grounded in one sphere (say labor rulings, which for awhile were distinct from commerce or property), or the rights as chips idea. All of these insights are reasonable, and true to an extent, but they are a pretty typical too. For someone who wants a quick overview of how government evolved over the past 100 years, this works nicely, but it doesn't accomplish its authors' goals.

[Samuel P · Rating 5 out of 5]

My journey to become a true Skowronekite continues with one of his most recent contributions to the American Political Development field, with his co-founding parent of the field, Karen Orren. <3 This work is the distinguishing achievement of being a page turner and having me not want it to end, leading me to procrastinate finishing it in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable. Again, another master class work proving that thick academic work can be enjoyable to read and sets the bar higher for all scholars not to be lazy writers and use 'complex jargon' as an excuse for poor writing skills. *cough* *cough* Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones *cough* *cough*

The book itself is an ominous warning and foreshadows the future of American politics. It seemingly starts inevitably spiraling into self-destruction as the pursuit of policy breaks and transforms all rights and structures that have tried to contain it for the last couple of hundred years, for better or worse.

The observations made here complement other works of these two scholars, including Skowronek's 'The Politics Presidents Make.' Furthermore, the ideas put forward in this work have been lovingly researched, making it a prime example of excellent scholarship. It builds a cohesive narrative that explains and provides evidence for this new paradigm of understanding political development in the US.