Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment in the United States

Americans claim a strong attachment to the work ethic and regularly profess support for government policies to promote employment. Why, then, have employment policies gained only a tenuous foothold in the United States? To answer this question, Margaret Weir highlights two related elements: the power of ideas in policymaking and the politics of interest formation.

Margaret Weir is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. With Ira Katznelson, she is the coauthor of Schooling for All: Class, Race and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (Basic Books/University of California).