Presidential Address—Expertise, Advocacy and Deliberation: Lessons from Welfare Reform

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 20, No. 2, 191–197 (2001) © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In 1996, I left the federal Department of Health and Human Services “with some drama,” as one friend described it, after the Congress passed and the President signed a welfare law (The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) that I believed represented an abdication of federal responsibility for the poor and posed potentially dangerous consequences. The aftermath of the law has been different from what I expected—much larger caseload declines, significant increases in employment, fewer demonstrably adverse effects on children, and declines, though small ones, rather than increases in poverty rates for single mother families (DeVere et al., 2000; Urban Institute, 2000). The welfare law is clearly not the “cause” of these effects. The spectacularly good economy, dramatic increases in the EITC, and increased child support enforcement have all had their effects, and have certainly provided the material for large numbers of papers at APPAM conferences. Nor has the welfare law been the unqualified success that some have claimed. The problems of poverty and of too many children who are not thriving in this country have not been solved, another topic of compelling interest at APPAM meetings. This piece is not, however, about welfare policy. Since 1996, I have been a kibitzer, not an active participant in debates about the welfare law, recognizing that even if I considered myself able to be an objective observer (which I did not) no one else was likely to share that opinion. I am not going to change that stance here. What I would like to do, though, given the theme of the 2000 conference (Doing and Using Public Policy Analysis and Management Research), is reflect on the role of policy research in making public policy and on the responsibilities of policy researchers in the democratic process, using welfare reform, past and future, as an example. In doing so, I follow in the tradition of previous APPAM presidential addresses that have taken up these issues (e.g., Friedman, 1999; Radin 1997).