Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act

There is a large body of literature devoted to how “policies create politics” and how feedback effects from existing policy legacies shape potential reforms in a particular area. Although much of this literature focuses on self‐reinforcing feedback effects that increase support for existing policies over time, Kent Weaver and his colleagues have recently drawn our attention to self‐undermining effects that can gradually weaken support for such policies. The following contribution explores both self‐reinforcing and self‐undermining policy feedback in relationship to the Affordable Care Act, the most important health‐care reform enacted in the United States since the mid‐1960s. More specifically, the paper draws on the concept of policy feedback to reflect on the political fate of the ACA since its adoption in 2010. We argue that, due in part to its sheer complexity and fragmentation, the ACA generates both self‐reinforcing and self‐undermining feedback effects that, depending of the aspect of the legislation at hand, can either facilitate or impede conservative retrenchment and restructuring. Simultaneously, through a discussion of partisan effects that shape Republican behavior in Congress, we acknowledge the limits of policy feedback in the explanation of policy stability and change

The Rise and Fall of Social Trustee Professionalism

Elite lawyers have long urged the private practice bar to account for the interests of more than their clients in their work. A lawyer who served merely as a mouthpiece or hired gun of clients failed to meet the standards of professionalism, of failing to act, in Roscoe Pound\u27s words, in the spirit of a public service. Pound\u27s view, expressed in the mid-20th century, was premised on the ideal that the lawyer pursued a public calling that incidentally was remunerative. This ideal required the lawyer to serve as a social trustee, one encumbered by duties for the benefit of society. Pound\u27s statement was embraced by the American Bar Association and elite lawyers as exemplifying professionalism. The lawyer as social trustee professional reached its apex in the mid-1970s. Within a decade, lawyers wrote lamenting the end of the profession of law, of its descent into a trade or business. This lament has continued for thirty years. This essay discusses the reasons for the fall of social trustee professionalism and why lawyers should not expect its return. It suggests some parallels with a crisis of professionalism that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and why that crisis provides some insights into the legal profession\u27s present dilemma

Spartan Daily, April 2, 1984

Volume 82, Issue 44https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7162/thumbnail.jp

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT IN AGRICULTURE

The 1996 Farm Bill marks a new direction for the government in agriculture. By decoupling payments from price levels for crops, it undermines long-run political support for programs. Dairy price supports will end in 2000, and nutrition programs will be on a separate reauthorization schedule from farm programs. Together, these actions should weaken the farm bill coalition, making the remaining programs much more difficult to reauthorize than in earlier years. The 1996 Farm Bill may be the last farm bill of its kind and the beginning of the end to active government involvement in agricultural markets.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Public Television in Europe: The French and Greek Cases

The aim of this article is to examine the way technological developments and the internationalisation of the television industry affects public television (PTV) broadcasters in Europe. The work focuses on the policies pursued by PTV broadcasters in selected European countries in response to the challenges that confront them in the era of digital convergence. The changes in the European television landscape force public channels to rethink their position towards new digital technologies, organisational structures and programming policy and scheduling. To illustrate the difficulties but also the opportunities that arise during this period of change, the article analyses specific activities and strategies undertaken by public channels in the main areas examined (reorganisation, programming and technology) in one large (France) and one small European country (Greece)

The Politics of Budget Consolidation in Britain and Germany: the Impact of Blame-Avoidance Opportunities. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.2, 2005

According to parts of the literature, blame avoidance opportunities, i.e. the necessity and applicability of blame avoidance strategies, may differ among countries according to the respective institutional set-ups and between governing parties according to their programmatic orientation. In countries with many veto actors, a strategy of "Institutional Cooperation" among these actors is expected to diffuse blame sufficiently to render other blame avoidance strategies obsolete. In contrast, governments in Westminster democracies should resort to the more unilateral strategies of presentation, policy design and timing. At the same time, parties of the left are expected to have an easier time implementing spending cuts while right parties are less vulnerable when proposing tax increases. Evidence from the politics of budget consolidation in Britain and Germany does not corroborate these hypotheses. Instead, it seems that party competition conditions the effects institutions and the partisan complexion of governments have on the politics of blame avoidance

The Politics of Budget Consolidation in Britain and Germany: the Impact of Blame-Avoidance Opportunities. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.2, 2005

According to parts of the literature, blame avoidance opportunities, i.e. the necessity and applicability of blame avoidance strategies, may differ among countries according to the respective institutional set-ups and between governing parties according to their programmatic orientation. In countries with many veto actors, a strategy of "Institutional Cooperation" among these actors is expected to diffuse blame sufficiently to render other blame avoidance strategies obsolete. In contrast, governments in Westminster democracies should resort to the more unilateral strategies of presentation, policy design and timing. At the same time, parties of the left are expected to have an easier time implementing spending cuts while right parties are less vulnerable when proposing tax increases. Evidence from the politics of budget consolidation in Britain and Germany does not corroborate these hypotheses. Instead, it seems that party competition conditions the effects institutions and the partisan complexion of governments have on the politics of blame avoidance

Public Law Litigation and Electoral Time

Public law litigation is often politics by other means. Yet scholars and practitioners have failed to appreciate how public law litigation intersects with an important aspect of politics—electoral time. This Essay identifies three temporal dimensions of public law litigation. First, the electoral time of government litigants—measured by the fixed terms of state and federal executive officials—may affect their conduct in litigation, such as when they engage in midnight litigation in the run-up to and aftermath of their election. Second, the electoral time of state courts—measured by the fixed terms of state judges—creates openings for strategic behavior among litigants (both public and private), such as when they engage in temporal forum shopping between the court before and after judicial elections. Third, state judges may pursue their preferences in light of their own electoral time, such as when they choose to pursue midnight adjudication. This Essay suggests reasons to be concerned with these time-motivated behaviors, especially when they seek to entrench policies and to counteract the results of democratic elections. How courts, policymakers, and the public will respond to these concerns, only time will tell

Commandeering the People: Why the Individual Health Insurance Mandate is Unconstitutional

The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” includes what is called an “individual responsibility requirement” or mandate that all persons buy health insurance from a private company and a separate “penalty” enforcing this requirement. In this paper, I do not critique the individual mandate on originalist grounds. Instead, I explain why the individual mandate is unconstitutional under the existing doctrine by which the Supreme Court construes the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses and the tax power. There are three principal claims. First (Part II), since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has developed a doctrine allowing the regulation of wholly intrastate activity: the substantial effects doctrine. Although commonly conceived as a Commerce Clause doctrine, from its inception this doctrine has been grounded in the Necessary and Proper Clause. In the 1990s, the Supreme Court developed a judicially administrable test for whether it is “necessary” for Congress to reach intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce: the distinction between economic and noneconomic intrastate activity. Because the individual mandate fails to satisfy the requirements of this test as understood under existing doctrine, it exceeds the power granted to Congress by the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses as currently construed by the Supreme Court. The mandate also fails to satisfy an alternative to the substantial effects doctrine that was proposed by Justice Scalia in a concurring opinion. Second (Part III), because the “individual responsibility requirement” purports to be a regulation of commerce and cannot possibly be construed as a tax, it is not justified under the tax power of Congress; and, if the “requirement” or mandate is an unconstitutional regulation, there is nothing for the “penalty” to enforce. Neither is the penalty, considered apart from the regulatory requirement, a tax under current doctrine. Third (Part IV), the Supreme Court should not further expand Congress’s power beyond existing doctrine to allow it to mandate that individuals engage in economic activity by entering into contracts with private companies. Such economic mandates are directly analogous to the commandeering of the states that the Supreme Court has held to be an improper exercise of the commerce power. The very few mandates that are imposed on the people pertain to their fundamental duties as citizens of the United States, such as the duty to defend the country or to pay for its operation. A newfound congressional power to impose economic mandates to facilitate the regulation of interstate commerce would fundamentally alter the relationship of citizen and state by unconstitutionally commandeering the people