Policy Backlash Research Articles

The Effect of the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests on Police Budgets: How “Defund the Police” Sparked Political Backlash

Abstract This article investigates whether a core political demand of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests was realized: “defund the police.” Original hand-compiled data containing budget information on 264 major cities in the United States and comprehensive protest data enable us to assess the effect of protests on changes in city police budgets. We find no evidence that BLM protests led to police defunding. In cities with large Republican vote shares, protest is associated with significant increases in police budgets. We demonstrate that electoral incentives cannot explain this policy backlash. Instead, we provide tentative evidence that backlash in Republican cities might stem from policymakers’ own conservatism and entrenched right-wing influences within city politics. The analysis offers novel evidence on the consequences of the largest protest movement in U.S. history and reveals the importance of backlash in explaining policy outcomes of social movements.

The Impact of Government Policy on Brazil Economic Miracle’s Failure

From 1968 to 1973, Brazil experienced unprecedented economic growth thanks to the reform policies in the political and economic spherespolicies of the military government. However, after 1974, due to changes in the domestic and international environment and multiple subjective and objective reasons, coupled with the impact of the global oil crisis, Brazil’s economy gradually declined. And after 1980, it entered what was known as the "lost decade". The article analyzes the policy-level causes of Brazil's economic miracle recession in a comparative manner, using data from the statistical yearbooks obtained from the Brazilian National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI) for the period 1970 to 1980. The analysis shows that a large part of the reason for the gradual decline of the Brazilian economic miracle came from the policies implemented by the Brazilian government during this period, such as debt development strategy, industrial-based industrial structure, trade protection and state intervention. The article further notes that the late decline of Brazil's economic miracle is precisely due to its policy nature of short-term overdraft and unsustainability. By inference, if a country implements policies during economic transition that are not based on its own national conditions, ignoring its own resource advantages, focusing on economic development and neglecting social and livelihood protection it may repeat the bad consequences of the policy backlash suffered by Brazil.Through the compilation and analysis of data, the article explores and summarizes the deep-seated reasons behind the decline of Brazil's economic miracle from the policy level, and provides lessons for other countries to learn in the process of developing their own economies.

Backlash to Climate Policy

Abstract Hard climate policy (e.g., regulation, taxes/pricing, phaseouts) is needed to meet ambitious climate targets, but when such policy is introduced, it can sometimes trigger backlash. Backlash involves an abrupt and forceful negative reaction by a significant number of actors seeking to reverse a policy, often through extraordinary means that transgress established procedures and norms. Yet, explanations of policy backlash remain nascent and fragmented. I synthesize insights from within and beyond climate politics to argue that contested legitimacy is central to climate policy backlash, which provokes attempts toward delegitimation. I develop a conceptual pathway to explain the occurrence of climate policy backlash and generate hypotheses about how practices of delegitimation occur, and their effects. This contributes to explaining why backlash occurs, highlighting ideational factors alongside interests and institutions. Overall, I suggest the need for a contextually embedded approach to understanding the volatile dynamics of backlash, bringing political sociology into conversation with political economy.

System justification motivation as a source of backlash against equality‐promoting policies—and what to do about it

AbstractOne of the most pressing tasks facing policymakers in the 21st century is reducing stark group‐based inequalities that have developed within many societies because of centuries of structural discrimination. However, efforts to redress group disparities through equality‐promoting policies are frequently met with policy backlash and countermobilization. We describe several social psychological contributors to policy backlash, distinguishing between identity‐based and ideology‐based processes. While the role of identity politics in driving support and opposition to policies pertaining to race, gender, and sexual orientation is well‐known, less attention has been given to the role of ideological motivation, including individual and group differences in system justification tendencies to defend and bolster the societal status quo. In this article, we develop a framework based on system justification theory to understand why backlash against equality‐promoting policies occurs, when such backlash is most likely to occur, and who is most likely to be countermobilized against such policies. From this perspective, policy backlash is motivated not only by the desire on the part of advantaged group members to maintain their own existing privileges but also by the broader desire to maintain the perceived legitimacy and stability of the overarching social system. We make recommendations about how leaders can develop and communicate about equality‐promoting policies in a way that reduces the likelihood of backlash due to system justification motivation.

Driving Labor Apart: Climate Policy Backlash in the American Auto Corridor

Driving Labor Apart: Climate Policy Backlash in the American Auto Corridor

Backlash policy diffusion to populists in power.

We analyze how parties respond programmatically to populist parties in power abroad. Political parties often copy the policies of governing parties in other countries–a phenomenon that contributes to waves of transnational policy diffusion. We report the first large-scale comparative study showing that populist parties in government abroad trigger the opposite reaction: instead of inspiring emulation, their highly visible governing dilemmas provoke a policy backlash by parties in other states. We argue that dilemmas arise because populist parties confront unique and debilitating trade-offs between maintaining their anti-system posture and governing effectively, which make them electorally vulnerable. Other parties observe foreign populists’ governing dilemmas and respond by distancing themselves in order to avoid these problems. We detect this “foreign populist backlash effect” using spatial econometric analysis, a method that allows us to estimate international policy connections between parties, applied to over 200 European parties’ programmatic positions since the 1970s. Our findings illuminate parties’ election strategies and show that this backlash effect constrains the spread of populism across Western democracies.

Backlash Politics in America's Disunited and Polarized State

AbstractThe policy feedback literature developed in an era in which the level of polarization and the intensity of party competition were far lower than today. These background conditions narrowed the scope of many policy debates and facilitated the consolidation of programmatic expansions after their enactment. As a result, the feedback literature emphasized the ways that new policies build supportive constituencies and become entrenched. While the core insight that policies can generate major political repercussions remains solid, American political development (APD) scholars should pay greater attention to the role of negative feedback processes and backlash politics in an era of disunity. Based on a review of New York Times articles mentioning policy backlash between 1960 and 2019, I show that the 2010s was a period of heightened countermobilization. Backlash forces have diffused from civil rights into many other arenas—including health, trade, and immigration—due to partisan polarization, conflicts over cultural shifts, and the negative feedback from activist government itself.

Opposition Avoidance or Mutual Engagement? The Interdependent Dynamics between Opposing Transnational LGBT+ Networks

AbstractEmbeddedness within transnational networks influences how countries govern LGBT+ communities. Research commonly highlights how pro-LGBT+ networks enable the expansion of rights; however, increased transnational coordination between anti-LGBT+ actors means network embeddedness also leads to policy backlash. Therefore, an important question to ask is: why are countries differentially embedded within these opposing networks to begin with? Moreover, does embeddedness in one network influence embeddedness in the other over time? To answer these questions, I develop original datasets of transnational pro- and anti-LGBT+ networks from 1990 to 2018. Using cross-lagged and dynamic panel models, results reveal that there is indeed an interdependent relationship where opposing networks mutually engage, or “follow,” one another; however, these patterns vary across region. These results give insights into how countries exist in tension between these opposing networks and can help illuminate where expansion and backlash may transpire. While focused on LGBT+ networks, these findings give insights into tensions over (il)liberalism and gender justice occurring within the international community.

Policy backlash: a novel approach to the study of radical right mobilisation

Policy backlash: a novel approach to the study of radical right mobilisation

The Affordable Care Act and the Diffusion of Policy Feedback: The Case of Medicaid Work Requirements

Over the last five years, many states have sought to limit access to Medicaid by adopting restrictive policies. How can we reconcile this development with studies that imply that Medicaid should be insulated from policy backlash? The answer lies in understanding the policy feedback effects that accompanied Medicaid expansion and how these effects created electoral pressure that led to policy modification. We situate our expectations within a policy diffusion framework that accounts for variation in both the content and timing of policy adoptions across states. We develop and test several hypotheses using survey data and an original dataset on gubernatorial support for Medicaid work requirements. Our hypotheses are generally supported and provide a more nuanced understanding of the policy feedback effects following Medicaid expansion.

Limiting Policy Backlash: Strategies for Taming Countercoalitions in an Era of Polarization

Policy backlash occurs when people or organizations mobilize against a policy during or after its enactment, diminishing the power of supporters and reducing the likelihood of the policy’s subsequent entrenchment and expansion. This article analyzes backlash as a case of negative policy feedback and explores some of the mechanisms through which backlash occurs among elites, organized groups, and mass publics. The main focus is on the politics of “backlash prevention”: using strategies to minimize the prospects of countercoalitions against policies serving diffuse or marginalized constituencies in an era of partisan polarization. These strategies include increasing the progressivity of programs after they have become embedded, recognizing that reforms can threaten the social identities and status of constituencies, and increasing reliance on low-visibility taxes. While countercoalitions cannot be completely neutralized in today’s contentious political environment, these strategies can load the dice in favor of sustainable change.

Perceptual Knots and Black Identity Politics: Linked Fate, American Heritage, and Support for Trump Era Immigration Policy

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much ado has been made about how racial anxiety fueled White vote choice for Donald Trump. Far less empirical attention has been paid to whether the 2016 election cycle triggered black anxieties and if those anxieties led blacks to reevaluate their communities’ standing relative to Latinos and immigrants. Employing data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we examine the extent to which race consciousness both coexists with black perceptions of Latinos and shapes black support for anti-immigrant legislation. Our results address how the conflation of Latino with undocumented immigrant may have activated a perceptional and policy backlash amongst black voters.

Public tax-return disclosure

We investigate the consequences of public disclosure of information from company income tax returns filed in Australia. Supporters of more disclosure argue that increased transparency will improve tax compliance, while opponents argue that it will divulge sensitive information that is, in many cases, misunderstood. Our results show that in Australia large private companies experienced some consumer backlash and, perhaps partly in anticipation, some acted to avoid disclosure. We detect a small increase (decrease) in tax payments for private (public) firms subject to disclosure suggesting differential costs of disclosure across firms. Finally, we find that investors react negatively to anticipated and actual disclosure of tax information, most likely due to anticipated policy backlash rather than consumer backlash or the revelation of negative information about cash flows. These findings are important for both managers and policy makers, as the trend towards increased tax disclosure continues to rise globally.

The Politics of Race, Administrative Appeals, and Medicaid Disenrollment in Tennessee

In 2004, Democratic Governor Philip Bredesen of Tennessee announced a plan to reform TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program. The reform package proposed to remove 323,000 adults from the program, which represented the most drastic cuts to Medicaid since its creation in 1965. The reform measure also allowed beneficiaries disenrolled from the program to appeal the decisions to the state Department of Human Services. This study examines how race and policy backlash—that is the backlash against Medicaid expansion—influenced the appellate process for beneficiaries removed from the program in Tennessee. The main argument is that race—especially the predisposition of African Americans—influenced the outcome of the appellate proceedings. The theoretical framework advanced in this study explains how procedural deliberations (legal decisions, policy disputes, administrative hearings) exacerbate disparities and produce differential outcomes that correspond with racial and other ascriptive hierarchies. The data for this research, comprising more than 60,000 former TennCare beneficiaries, were obtained through Open Records Requests in compliance with Tennessee state law. Using logistic regressions, the findings reveal a relationship between race and appellate proceedings. African Americans were treated unfairly in the early stage of the appellate process and those from racially polarized voting areas were less likely to receive fair rulings by hearing examiners. Additional findings identified age-related disparities between younger and older appellants, as well as a regional disadvantage between rural and urban beneficiaries.

Public Tax-Return Disclosure

We investigate the effect of public disclosure of information from corporate tax returns filed in Australia on consumers, investors, and the corporations themselves that were subject to disclosure. Supporters of more disclosure argue that increased transparency will improve tax compliance, while opponents argue that it will divulge sensitive information that is, in many cases, misunderstood. Our results show that large private companies are likely to experience consumer backlash and are also, perhaps as a consequence, more likely to act to avoid disclosure. We also fail to detect any material increase in tax payments, one objective of legislating the disclosure regime. Finally, we find that investors react negatively to anticipated and actual disclosure of tax information, most likely due to anticipated policy backlash than the revelation of negative tax information. These findings are important for both managers and policymakers as the trend towards increased tax disclosure continues to rise globally.

Money Versus the Soul: Neoliberal Economics in the Education Modernisation Reform of Post-Soviet Russia

Through the examination of the concept of ‘commercial service’ the article explores the ideological underpinnings and cultural embeddings of the market economy in post-Soviet education modernisation reform vis-a-vis the makeup of indigenous Russian culture and pedagogy. While post-Soviet Russia’s educational sector has been extensively commercialised, the public attitude towards the new educational economics have remained largely antagonistic. By bringing together the economic and the ideological angles, I show how bottom-up resistance is maintained and normalised, triggering a policy backlash. The article probes the obstinate public resistance to the idea of education as a ‘commodity’ and exposes the cultural logic behind it. Drawing on discourse studies and policy borrowing frameworks, the analysis demonstrates how the market values of competitive individualism, material profit and entrepreneurship were left under-conceptualised in the official discourse and consequently rejected in the public discourse in favour of domestic values of egalitarianism, collegiality, moral education, and an orientation towards non-materialist values.

White backlash: immigration, race, and American politics

Illustrations vii Tables ix Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION 1 PART I Theory 23 CHAPTER 1 A Theory of Immigration Backlash Politics 25 PART II Views on Immigration and Defection to the Republican Party 61 CHAPTER 2 Immigration, Latinos, and the Transformation of White Partisanship 63 CHAPTER 3 How Immigration Shapes the Vote 88 PART III Understanding the Roots of the Backlash 113 CHAPTER 4 The Geography of the Immigration Backlash 115 CHAPTER 5 Media Coverage of Immigration and White Macropartisanship 154 PART IV The Consequences 181 CHAPTER 6 The Policy Backlash 183 CONCLUSION Implications for A Deeply Divided United States 201 References 217 Index 233

Understanding the BRIC response to AIDS: political institutions, civil society, and historical policy backlash in comparative perspective

The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have differed in their government response to health epidemics. It is argued that Brazil eventually outpaced her emerging counterparts in response to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) due to the presence of political institutional, civil societal, and foreign policy strategies that both sustained and encouraged the introduction of innovative policies. The concept of historical policy backlash is introduced in order to explain how the BRIC’ differences in their historic roles as foreign aid donors in health shaped their incentive to either focus on domestic AIDS policy or foreign aid strategies at the expense of domestic policy. This article therefore represents the first attempt to combine comparative political–historical, social, and international processes to account for differences in the BRIC nations willingness and capacity to respond to AIDS.

East Asia in World Trade: The Decoupling Fallacy, Crisis and Policy Challenges

This paper examines the export experience of China and other East Asian economies in the aftermaths of the global financial crisis against the backdrop of pre-crisis trade patterns. The analysis is motivated by the ‘decoupling’ thesis, which was a popular theme in the Asian policy circles in the lead-up to the onset of the recent financial crisis, and aims to probe three key issues: Was the East Asian trade integration story that underpinned the decoupling thesis simply a statistical artifact or the massive export contraction caused by an overreaction of traders to the global economic crisis and/or by the drying up of trade credit, which overpowered the cushion provided by intra-regional trade? What are the new policy challenges faced by the East Asian economies? Is there room for an integrated policy response that marks a clear departure from the pre-crisis policy stance favoring export-oriented growth? The findings caution against a possible policy backlash against openness to foreign trade arising from the new-found enthusiasm for rebalancing growth, and make a strong case for a long-term commitment to non-discriminatory multilateral and unilateral trade liberalization.

Racial Diversity and Public Policy in the States

How does racial diversity affect public policy outcomes in the states? The policy backlash hypothesis suggests that the presence of blacks increases antagonistic attitudes toward minorities among whites and thus produces racially conservative policies. The electoral constraint hypothesis argues that the presence of blacks increases the size of population that supports policy liberalism and thus results in more liberal policies. The authors reconcile these competing explanations by arguing that the hypothesized negative impact of minority group size on policy liberalism varies across states in accordance with socioeconomic and institutional conditions that strengthen or weaken the impacts of electoral constraint or backlash.