Russel Sage Foundation

Barack Obama was elected President of the United States after a landmark campaign that featured sharp partisan shifts and enhanced mobilization of major sectors of the U.S. electorate. The Obama administration has stated its aims to refocus federal efforts on health care, support for higher education, financial regulation, environmental regulation, immigration regulation, and labor policy. Following several decades of increased subsidies for profit-makers and regulatory and tax measures that have deliberately redistributed wealth and opportunity upward, this administration now has the opportunity to mitigate and reverse trends toward greater inequality that have been aided and abetted by U.S. public policy.

Theda Skocpol (Harvard University) and Larry Jacobs (University of Minnesota) have formed a working group of eight scholars to trace and analyze the Obama administration's efforts to reorient U.S. public policy in a series of key areas. With an award from the Russell Sage Foundation, the group will take a real-time and comprehensive look at Obama's policy initiatives, putting the challenges he faces in reorienting U.S. domestic socio-economic policy in institutional-historical perspective, and tracing what happens with efforts to change federal interventions, spending, taxes, and regulation.

The group will address a number of salient questions, including: What special opportunities and obstacles does this ambitious presidential administration face? What goals have Obama and his allies set out for the country, and what choices will they make about sequencing their efforts, framing public arguments, and acting via administrative rules or legislative proposals? How does this era compare to earlier governmental watersheds in terms of shifts in electoral and civic engagement, economic crisis, public mood, and the media and interest group environment affecting public debates? And, of course, how much headway will the administration make and why? What do the overall results tell us about U.S. politics and governance in our era? Skocpol and Jacobs will analyze health care reform. Suzanne Bridget Mettler (Cornell University) will examine higher education policy. Daniel Carpenter (Harvard University) will focus on financial regulation, including consumer finance. John Skrentny (University of California, San Diego) will look at the administration’s adjustments to immigration policy. Dorian Warren (Columbia University) will examine labor policy, particularly union rules, labor law administration, and employment policies. Andrea Campbell (MIT) will investigate taxes and revenues and Judith Layzer (MIT) will address environmental policy.