Federal employees’ unions are prohibited from bargaining with federal agencies over wages and benefits, are legally barred from striking, and are precluded from collecting agency fees. Nonetheless, they are perceived to be politically powerful, and, in many ways, represent the future of other public sector unions. Political scientists Rachel Potter and Alexander Bolton will investigate what attributes make federal employee unions strong and how union strength affects workplace outcomes such as employee benefits.
About This Book
This booklet outlines the social work of the state of Florida. Among the topics discussed are war activities, care of soldiers and their families, food conservation, education in patriotism, administration of boards and institutions, the public health service, the prison system, infant mortality, child labor, recreation, public education, and care of the poor.
HASTINGS H. HART was the director of the Department of Child-Helping at the Russell Sage Foundation.
CLARENCE L. STONAKER was a staff member of the State Charities Aid and Prison Reform Association of New Jersey.
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Books
Stable Condition
Elites' Limited Influence on Health Care Attitudes
Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in.
332 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-028-7
About This Book
"The elite-level battle over the Affordable Care Act has consumed a decade, the ACA has transformed millions of lives—mostly for the better—and yet Daniel Hopkins’s brilliant new book, Stable Condition, shows that all this has barely moved a polarized public. What does this ‘stable condition’ mean for politicalscience and policymaking alike? Read this fascinating book to find out."
—JACOB S. HACKER, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), the sweeping health care reform enacted by the Obama Administration in 2010, continues to be a contentious policy at the center of highly polarized political debates. Both before and after the law’s passage, political elites on both sides of the issue attempted to sway public opinion through two traditional approaches: messaging and policymaking itself. They operated under the assumption that the public’s personal experiences toward the law would make them more favorable. Yet these tried-and-true methods have had limited influence on public attitudes toward the ACA. Public opinion towards the ACA remained stable from 2010 to 2016, with more Americans opposing the law than supporting it. It was only after Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and the prospect of the law being repealed became a reality that public opinion swung in favor of the ACA. If traditional methods of influencing public opinion had little impact on attitudes towards the ACA, what did? In Stable Condition, political scientist Daniel J. Hopkins draws on survey data from 2009 to 2020 to assess how a variety of factors such as personal experience, political messaging, and partisanship did or did not affect public opinion on the ACA.
Hopkins finds that although personal experience with the ACA’s Medicaid expansion increased favorability among low-income Americans, it did not have a broader overall impact on public opinion. Personal experience with the Health Insurance Marketplace did not increase wider support for the ACA either. Due to the complex nature of the law, users of the Marketplace often did not realize they were benefiting from the ACA. Therefore, perceptions of the Marketplace were shaped by high-profile issues with the enrollment website and opposition to the individual mandate. These experiences ultimately offset one another, resulting in little discernable change in public opinion overall. Hopkins argues that political polarization was also responsible for elite’s limited influence and that public opinion on the ACA was largely determined by partisanship and political affiliation. Americans quickly aligned with their party’s stance on the law and were resistant to changing their beliefs despite the efforts of political elites.
Stable Condition is an illuminating examination of the limits of elites’ influence and the forces that shaped public opinion about the Affordable Care Act.
DANIEL J. HOPKINS is a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania.
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African American families are more likely than other racial groups to transmit poverty over generations. At the same time, under-resourced African Americans participate in politics at higher rates than their White counterparts and, at times, middle-class African Americans. Political scientist Christina Slaughter will explore how persistent poverty shapes African Americans’ political engagement, including their perceptions of government effectiveness in redressing racial inequality.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, roughly two-thirds of Asian Americans voted for Hillary Clinton and 19% voted for Donald Trump. In 2020, support for Trump among Asian Americans increased to 28%, with Filipinos registering the highest amount of support, at 38 percent. Sociologist Sharon M. Quinsaat and political scientist Nico Ravanilla will examine the role of pre-migration political experiences and social relationships in the U.S. in the formation of conservative attitudes and beliefs among Filipino immigrants.
The Black Lives Matter movement is one of the most consequential social movements of our time, mounting the largest mass protest in American history in 2020. Black people were motivated to action despite their alienation, which comprises experiences of anti-Blackness, police violence, and state neglect. We can understand the 2020 uprisings as emerging from years of sustained, on-the-ground organizing and political education across localities. Political scientist Elizabeth Jordie Davies will investigate how Black Americans’ alienation from the state informs Bla
Political scientists have long documented trends in public opinion, but our understanding of how and why public opinion changes on issues is limited. Political scientist and social policy scholar Erica Czaja will examine the role of empathy during the COVID-19 crisis and the social protests of 2020 in shifting Americans’ understandings of systemic racism. She will conduct an original survey experiment and will analyze survey data from the KFF/The Undefeated Survey on Race and Health and the Axios/Ipsos Hard Truth Civil Rights & Social Justice poll for her project.
One possible explanation for the reason why lawmakers do not prioritize pro-immigration reform when most people support it is because pro-immigration voters do not care much about immigration, whereas anti-immigration voters view it as their most important issue. Political scientist Alexander Kustov will examine the perceived importance of immigration issues among pro- and anti-immigration voters. He will conduct a survey with 2,700 participants for his study.
Individuals who are not attached to Democratic or Republican political ideology may identify as moderates or hold “cross-pressured” attachments – holding positions on issues that go against those typically held by their preferred partisan group. These individuals may therefore opt out of consuming political media or participating in online political spaces. Political scientist Katherine McCabe will examine the extent to which exposure to online political spaces increases the political engagement of politically moderate Reddit users.