The Politics of Failed Policies

The Politics of Failed Policies examines the darker side of state autonomy and policy experimentation in our federal system: policy failure. While advances in statistics and computing promised the ability to evaluate the outcomes of state policies more precisely and accurately, the path from information to responsive policy remains far from guaranteed, especially given our highly polarized political climate. Most of the existing scholarship focuses on individual characteristics that affect public officials’ likelihood of internalizing new information and refining their policy preferences. In stark contrast, author Sarah Jamestakes a historical institutionalist approach and shows that the design, resources, and processes of state-level research institutions can systematically influence when evidence can overcome confirmation bias and partisan preferences among elected state officials evaluating a policy. This work contributes a more precise definition of a state’s capacity for research that better explains political responses to policy failure. The detailed case studies support a theory of policy feedback in which policy and institutional landscape can empower diffusely organized and disadvantaged policy opponents to overcome the power of the traditional winners in the American political economy.

The Politics of Failed Policies takes seriously that policy research and learning are not isolated from the caprices of party politics, and yet I show that state politics and policymaking are not irrevocably beholden to the whims of partisan bickering. While ideological battles, pressure from well-resourced interest groups, and, yes, even elections, remain formidable forces in American politics, strategically designed state policies and institutions can lay a foundation for building a coalition to respond to actual policy outcomes. Choices about policy and institutional design have long-term effects on when, how, and why public officials feel pressured to acknowledge and respond to policy failure.

Sarah James is an assistant professor of political science at Gonzaga University. She has a PhD in Government and Social Policy from Harvard University. She was the Arleen Carlson & Edna Nelson Graduate Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. James has published in State Politics and Policy Quarterly, The Russel Sage Journal for the Social Sciences, and College Teaching. James also has a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Boston University. She has extensive experience in public K-12 education, first as a teacher, then as a high school principal, and she currently serves on the board of trustees for a Boston charter school.