Mobilization, Countermobilization, and Backlash in the U.S. Policy State

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel examines how organized groups in the U.S. policy state use their influence to advance their interests—and how policies, in turn, mobilize opposition forces, trigger political backlashes, and deepen social cleavages. Rather than viewing policy outcomes as a straightforward reflection of power dynamics, the panel examines the manifold ways that politics and policymaking reshape one another over time. Exploring issues from gun control to trade policy, the papers investigate the conditions under which policies stimulate both positive and negative feedbacks in an era of hyperpolarization.

The first paper, “The Political Influence of City Employees: Civil Service Adoption in America,” by Sarah Anzia and Jessica Trounstine, examines the origins of one of the most important transformations in American government—the shift from patronage-based administration to civil service in municipalities. Leveraging a database on patterns of civil service adoption across 1,000 city governments, the authors show that a key engine behind this development was the local presence of an early occupational organization, the International Association of Fire Fighters. The paper provides new evidence of how interest-group power can not only change the allocation of public resources but also alter fundamental patterns of governance.

The next three papers turn to an exploration of backlash and counter-mobilization dynamics. In “The Politics of Policy Backlash in the U.S. Since 1960” Eric Patashnik examines the limits of positive feedback and increasing returns processes by exploring the conditions under which public policies activate or mobilize opposition among mass publics, organized groups, and political elites. Analyzing a database of more than 1,000 New York Times articles discussing backlash politics since 1960, Patashnik shows that backlash forces have diffused across U.S. policy arenas from civil rights to immigration over time, are associated with partisan polarization, and are predominately conservative in ideological direction.

In “Outraged Women: Gun Policy and Counter-mobilization in the US, 1980-2020,” Matthew Lacombe and Kristin Goss examine the emergence of a movement, driven by women, against the failure of policymakers to regulate firearms and curb the growing rights of gun owners. Drawing on an original dataset containing more than 4,400 letters to the editor published over a 40-year period, they show how political identities can emerge as a product of backlash in response to a changing policy environment.

Finally, Trevor Brown and Suzanne Mettler,” in their paper entitled “Public Policy and the Rural-Urban Political Divide,” examine the growing divide between how rural and urban areas vote and experience public policies. While voters in rural counties were only marginally more likely than their urban peers to vote for Republican candidates as late as the 1990s, the rural-urban partisan divide widened to a full 21 percentage points in 2020. Brown and Mettler merge individual- and county-level data on public opinion and political behavior to examine how social and careral policies as well as exposure to trade competition and war casualties shape political attitudes and voting behavior.

Sub Unit

• Division 25: Public Policy

Individual Presentations

• The Political Influence of City Employees: Civil Service Adoption in America - Sarah F. Anzia, University of California-Berkeley; Jessica Luce Trounstine, University of California, Merced

• The Politics of Policy Backlash in the U.S. Since 1960 - Eric M. Patashnik, Brown University

• Public Policy and the Rural-Urban Political Divide - Trevor Brown, Cornell University; Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University

• Outraged Women: Gun Policy and Counter-Mobilization in the US, 1980-2020 - Kristin Goss, Duke University; Matthew Lacombe, Case Western Reserve University

Chair

• Matt Grossmann Michigan State University

Discussants

• Chloe Thurston Northwestern University

• Matt Grossmann Michigan State University