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Conflicting Messages: Multiple Policy Experiences and Political Participation
Author(s) -
Rosenthal Aaron
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/psj.12368
Subject(s) - counterintuitive , politics , receipt , democracy , public policy , political science , turnout , set (abstract data type) , welfare , deliberation , citizen journalism , public economics , public administration , political economy , public relations , sociology , economics , voting , philosophy , accounting , epistemology , computer science , law , programming language
Most Americans benefit from several policies, yet studies connecting policy receipt to political participation generally treat these interactions as isolated from each other. This article grounds itself in this reality by examining how multiple policy experiences interact to alter political participation. Focusing on policies that send conflicting messages to beneficiaries, I provide a political learning framework and set of quantitative findings that nuance conventional understandings of the relationship between the American welfare state and turnout behavior. The results demonstrate that politically mobilizing universal policies and demobilizing means‐tested policies can cancel each other out, such that individuals benefitting from both exhibit no change in their participatory behavior. Thus, the political impact of policies within each tier are shown to be contingent on one's involvement in the other tier. In a counterintuitive finding, this analysis further shows that multiple policy experiences within the means‐tested tier can combine to increase turnout rates due to the political lessons imparted by Head Start's uniquely democratic design. In advancing our understanding of the role public policies play in shaping American democracy, these findings demonstrate the importance of considering how policy feedback effects impact each other.