Category: Special Topics

Immigration, Government Type, and Social Welfare Spending

by Hang Qi

Immigration and the welfare state are often cast as adversaries in political debates. When immigration increases, concerns about overburdened social services frequently rise to the surface—especially during times of fiscal constraint. But is the relationship really that simple?

In my recent article, I argue that this question cannot be adequately answered without considering the role of the institutional framework and arrangements—specifically, the type of government in power.

Drawing on panel data from 28 advanced democracies between 1980 and 2019, I examine how immigration inflows interact with government types—single-party majority, coalition, and minority governments—to influence welfare spending. My findings show that the relationship between immigration and social expenditure is not uniform. While immigration alone does not have a consistent effect on welfare spending, its impact is significantly shaped by the type of government.

Coalition and minority governments – where power is more dispersed – are more likely to respond to immigration with increased welfare spending. This contrasts with single-party majority governments, which tend to be more cautious or even restrictive. The reasons are both institutional and political. In more fragmented governments, there are numerous veto players, and accountability is shared. This can shield pro-welfare and pro-immigration parties from electoral risks and dilute the policy influence of anti-immigrant sentiment.

By contrast, single-party majority governments, especially under growing public concern about immigration, may face stronger incentives to hold down spending. Parties in such governments are more directly accountable for all policy outcomes and may be wary of appearing “soft” on immigration in the eyes of median voters.

Real-world cases underscore these dynamics. In France, left parties in coalition governments have actively defended immigrants’ access to healthcare, despite political resistance. Meanwhile, in Denmark and the U.S., left-leaning single-party governments have in some instances moderated or even reversed their immigration-friendly positions in response to electoral pressure.

These findings illustrate a broader lesson: institutions matter. Political institutions determine how the government responds to social pressures and also condition whether immigration leads to policy expansion or retrenchment. Understanding these institutional filters is crucial for designing sustainable and inclusive social welfare policies in an era of increasing migration and political polarization.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Qi, Hang. 2025. “ Immigration, Government Type, and Social Welfare Spending.” Policy Studies Journal 00(0): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.70015.

About the Author

Hang Qi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the University of Macau. His research focuses on the policy and politics of redistribution, immigration policy, fiscal policy, and political economy. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Policy Studies Journal, Public Opinion Quarterly, American Politics Research, and other journals.

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Advocacy Groups, Policy Subsidies, and Policy Change: The Case of Teacher Evaluations

by Leslie K. Finger

In many policy areas, powerful interest groups—such as labor unions or industry associations—shape and protect the status quo. When these vested interests have significant financial and political clout, how do policymakers manage to enact major reforms against their preferences? My paper examines this question through the lens of teacher evaluation policy in the U.S., revealing that advocacy groups play a crucial role in facilitating policy change by providing what I call policy subsidies: information, resources, and capacity that enable reform-minded policymakers to push past entrenched opposition.

My primary research question is: How are powerful interest groups with a stake in the status quo overcome? In the case of teacher evaluations, many states moved to incorporate student growth measures—often derived from standardized testing—as a sizable portion of their teacher evaluation systems despite fierce resistance from teachers’ unions. I investigate why some states were more successful than others in adopting and sustaining these reforms, focusing on the role of advocacy groups in supporting policy change.

Teachers’ unions have long been among the most influential state-level interest groups, using their financial resources and political leverage to shape education policy. Given their strength, it would be expected that states would avoid implementing teacher evaluations that include student achievement as a key factor. Yet, from 2009 to 2015, a growing number of states adopted such provisions. Why?

I argue that advocacy groups—such as education reform organizations—provided information (i.e., policy ideas, analysis, data) and capacity (i.e., time-consuming actions). I call these assets policy subsidies. By reducing the costs associated with enacting and implementing controversial reforms, policy subsidies can make it easier for policymakers to challenge vested interests and push through significant policy changes.

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To test this theory, I conducted a 50-state quantitative analysis of teacher evaluation policymaking between 2010 and 2011 and case studies of Minnesota and Wisconsin, two states that took different policy paths. The study tested two primary hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: States where advocacy groups provide policy subsidies are more likely to implement policy change opposed by vested interests than those without such groups.

Hypothesis 2: States where those in power are open to change are more likely to implement significant policy change opposed by vested interests than those without such politicians in power.

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My quantitative analysis showed that states where advocacy groups were active were significantly more likely to pass teacher evaluation reforms (see Figure 1). The effect of advocacy groups was strongest in states where Republicans controlled the legislature. In these states, advocacy groups helped craft policies that successfully incorporated student achievement as a “significant” factor in teacher evaluations (see Table 5). My case studies of Minnesota and Wisconsin illustrate this dynamic in action. In Minnesota, advocacy groups worked closely with Republican lawmakers to provide both technical policy assistance and political support, leading to the adoption of evaluation reforms. In contrast, Wisconsin—despite similar political conditions where Republicans were in control—lacked strong advocacy group engagement, and teacher evaluation reform was delegated to the bureaucracy, where, in the absence of advocacy group involvement, the student achievement provision was compromised during implementation..

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This study demonstrates that interest group influence is not absolute; advocacy groups can play a decisive role in shifting policy outcomes by lowering the costs of reform, even where vested interests are strong. Additionally, having policymakers favorable to a particular policy is not enough to overcome vested interests— policymakers need interest group allies to help them craft and implement those policies that might otherwise be stopped in their tracks by powerful interest groups. The concept of policy subsidies extends beyond education, offering insights into how policy entrepreneurs in other domains—such as climate change, healthcare, or labor policy—can challenge entrenched interests.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Finger, Leslie K. 2024. “ Advocacy Groups, Policy Subsidies, and Policy Change: The Case of Teacher Evaluations.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (4): 777–808. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12538.

About the Author

Leslie K. Finger is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses on interest groups, policymaking, and state and local politics with a focus on education policy. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Governance, Policy Studies Journal, Interest Groups & Advocacy, American Politics Research, and State Politics & Policy.

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Not a Public Good, but a Public Responsibility: Rethinking AMR Governance

by Isaac Weldon

Governance failures often stem from a fundamental error: misdiagnosing what needs to be governed. As Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom argued, different types of goods—whether private, public, or common-pool—create distinct collective action problems, each demanding tailored solutions. When policymakers misidentify a resource or conflate its nature with how it should be governed, they risk applying the wrong tools and crafting ineffective policies. These misdiagnoses plague many of today’s biggest challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss and global health.

Effective governance begins with defining what resources are being managed, how they are being depleted, and what institutional arrangements are necessary to sustain them. In a recent Policy Studies Journal article, my co-authors and I applied this logic to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the world’s most pressing health challenges.

AMR—the third leading cause of global mortality—occurs when microbes evolve resistance to antimicrobial drugs like antibiotics, rendering treatments ineffective. Every use of antimicrobials increases this risk, and millions still lack access to these lifesaving medicines. AMR governance requires balancing conservation with equitable access and innovation, yet current policies struggle because they misdiagnose the problem itself.

Central to AMR are two distinct types of goods:

  • Antimicrobials (the physical pills) are private goods: They are excludable (they require prescriptions and money to access) and rivalrous (one person’s use prevents another from using the same dose). Historically, the default governance model for antimicrobials has been market-driven, relying on intellectual property protections and pricing mechanisms to incentivize production and ration use.
  • Antimicrobial effectiveness (the ability of these drugs to work over time) is a common-pool resource: It is non-excludable (difficult to prevent people from benefiting from it) and rivalrous (overuse diminishes effectiveness for all). Markets fail to govern this resource because firms and individuals benefit from selling and consuming more antimicrobials, not from ensuring long-term effectiveness.

But the nature of a resource does not dictate how it should be governed. Just because antimicrobials are private goods does not mean they should be left to market forces alone. Many excludable and rivalrous private goods—such as electricity and water—are publicly regulated because they are essential and generate widespread externalities. However, the fact that antimicrobial effectiveness is critical for public health does not mean it should be framed as a public good. Unlike true public goods, antimicrobial effectiveness is rivalrous—a distinction that shapes its governance. The pill (a private good) and its effectiveness (a common-pool resource) are distinct but interconnected, and their governance must reflect this.

In short: antimicrobials are private goods, antimicrobial effectiveness is a common-pool resource, and their governance must be a public responsibility.

AMR is not an isolated case. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and global health challenges all suffer when the wrong governance model is applied to the wrong kind of resource. Misidentifying the nature of a resource, or conflating its nature with its optimal governance regime, leads to mismatches that render solutions ineffective.

Better governance starts with better problem definitions. If we fail to define what is being governed, we will continue applying the wrong solutions—at great cost to human health and the planet.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Weldon, Isaac, Kathleen Liddell, Susan Rogers Van Katwyk, Steven J. Hoffman, Timo Minssen, Kevin Outterson, Stephanie Palmer, A. M. Viens and Jorge Viñuales. 2024. “ Analyzing Antimicrobial Resistance As a Series of Collective Action Problems.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 833–856. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12552.

About the Author

Isaac Weldon is an Assistant Professor of Law with the Centre for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law (CeBIL) at the University of Copenhagen and an Investigator with the Global Strategy Lab at York University, Toronto. His research investigates antimicrobial resistance, emerging pandemic threats, and sustaining our planetary health. Recent works have also been featured in Perspectives on Politics and Globalization and Health.

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The Power of Political Will in Driving Policy Innovation

by Shiran Victoria Shen

In a world facing climate crises, pandemics, and geopolitical shifts, governments must embrace bold policy innovation.  Scholars have long examined the drivers of policy change—ranging from economic conditions to policy diffusion and entrepreneurial leadership. Yet, one critical but underexplored factor is political will.

In my recent Policy Studies Journal article, I argue that political will is a key driver of drastic policy innovation—policy changes so bold that they redefine governmental priorities and novel policy instruments that any jurisdiction has rarely tested in the country. Using China’s low-carbon city experimentation as a case study, I show that strong political will among local leaders significantly increased the likelihood of drastically innovative climate policy measures being adopted and implemented.

What Is Political Will?

Political will is the commitment of key decision-makers (i.e., elected politicians in democracies or political leaders in autocracies) to enact and implement policies, even at political or financial risk. It consists of three key components:

  1. Authority – The power to enact and enforce policies
  2. Capacity – The fiscal, human, and administrative resources to implement them effectively
  3. Legitimacy – Stakeholder acceptance, which is crucial for garnering support and reducing resistance

Political will is distinct from political power.  While power provides the means, political will determines whether leaders use that power to drive bold policy change.

How Political Will Shapes Drastic Policy Innovation

China’s low-carbon city pilot provides a suitable setting to study political will. Unlike many centrally led pilots, this initiative required cities to voluntarily apply and commit their own resources. My research examines the second batch of pilot cities, which were selected based on leadership engagement, demonstrability, and locally driven decarbonization strategies.

Political will is gauged by the Leader of the Low-Carbon City Construction Leading Group (LCCLG). I found that cities where the prefectural party secretary—the highest-ranking local official—steered the LCCLG were significantly more likely to introduce and implement drastically innovative climate policies. These leaders not only set ambitious goals but also effectively mobilized resources and overcame bureaucratic resistance. In contrast, cities where their low-carbon city pilots were led by lower-ranking officials demonstrated a weaker commitment, resulting in fewer innovative policies proposed or implemented.

Why Institutionalizing Political Will Matters

A critical insight from my study is that when political will is institutionalized, policy innovation persists despite leadership turnover. In China, this was achieved through LCCLGs, which maintained policy continuity even when key officials changed.

This challenges the conventional wisdom that leadership changes disrupt policy innovation.  Instead, embedding political will within the leadership structure sustains transformative policy efforts over time.

Lessons for Policymakers Worldwide

Although my case study focuses on China, the implications extend beyond authoritarian regimes. In democracies, political will is shaped by electoral incentives, coalition-building, and public advocacy, requiring a different approach to measurement. In authoritarian states, political will aligns closely with leader rank and authority, whereas in democracies, multiple veto points necessitate a broader set of variables.

Yet the core principle remains: bold policy innovation depends on committed leadership willing to take risks and overcome resistance.

For policymakers and scholars, political will should be explicitly considered as a critical driver of policy innovation. Whether tackling climate change, public health, or economic shock, fostering and institutionalizing political will enables governments to implement transformative policies that endure.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Shen, Shiran Victoria. 2025. “ Political Will As a Source of Policy Innovation.” Policy Studies Journal 53(1): 185–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12571.

About the Author

Shiran Victoria Shen is a senior research scholar and the lead for the China Energy Program at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.  Her research examines how incentives and institutions shape climate and environmental actions.  More broadly, she is interested in key issues in public policy and governance.

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Unpacking Core Components of Interventions: A Comparison of Synthesis Approaches

by Sebastian Lemire & Allan Porowski

Evidence reviews have become a key tool for evidence-based policy, helping policymakers make informed decisions about which interventions to implement. Traditionally, these reviews have focused on the outcomes of entire interventions. However, the growing interest in the specific elements that drive intervention effect has over the past ten years led to a focus on core components—the key features that contribute to an intervention’s effectiveness. Core components refer to the essential features of an intervention—such as activities, services, or practices—that available evidence shows are effective in driving outcomes. Identifying these core components can help create more effective interventions by highlighting the features that contribute most to desired outcomes. Identifying with greater precision what works, in which contexts, and for which populations can help policymakers assess which existing policies and interventions are (or are not) likely to be effective and better understand why policies or interventions that share similar characteristics may achieve different results.

In our PSJ research note, we describe four evidence synthesis approaches—distillation and matching model, meta-regression, framework synthesis, and qualitative comparative analysis—to identify these core components. Each approach offers unique advantages depending on the available data and intervention context. Understanding the various approaches, along with their respective advantages and limitations, can help researchers select the most appropriate analysis method based on the purpose of their evidence review, the intended audience, and how the findings will be applied.

To further enhance the use of core components analysis, we call for advancements in improving reporting conventions, using multi-phased designs, and expanding applications of core component analysis. Providing more detailed reporting of the intervention characteristics, setting, participants, implementation, and costs in primary studies provides for a stronger foundation for core components analysis. To enhance core components analyses even further, a multi-phase approach can be used. In the first phase, researchers analyze evidence in a specific field, and in the second phase, they collaborate with practitioners to design field trials based on the findings to evaluate the effectiveness of core components Finally, applying core components analysis across a broader range of interventions, practices, and policies, with more diverse populations, and in a variety of settings can help policymakers understand how evidence-based interventions and policies should be designed to ensure that they promote positive outcomes in diverse contexts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Lemire, Sebastian, Laura R. Peck, Allan Porowski and Allison Dymnicki. 2025. “ Unpacking Core Components For Policy Design: A Comparison of Synthesis Approaches.” Policy Studies Journal 53(1): 171–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12567.

About the Authors

Sebastian Lemire is a Senior Scientist at Abt Global. His research focuses on systematic evidence reviews, alternative approaches to impact evaluation, and evaluation capacity building. He currently serves on the executive board of the American Evaluation Association and on the editorial advisory boards of Evaluation and the American Journal of Evaluation.

Allan Porowski is a Principal Associate at Abt Global. He is a leading expert in the design, execution and analysis of randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies and national cross-site evaluations of education, health, and other social interventions.


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Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14

by William D. Schreckhise & Daniel E. Chand

On the first day of his second term, Present Trump signed an executive order taking aim at “so-called sanctuary jurisdictions,” marking his latest attempt to step up immigration enforcement in progressive, pro-immigrant communities. While there’s no universal definition as to what constitutes “sanctuary” jurisdictions, the most accepted definition are communities that limit state and local law enforcement participation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), enforcement program known as Secure Communities (S-Comm).

S-Comm is, essentially, a nationwide immigration screening program. It has long been commonplace for jails to share an individual’s name and biometric information (e.g., photo, fingerprints, etc.) with federal authorities to see if the person has a criminal record or any outstanding warrants when an individual is arrested and booked. S-Comm further shares this information with ICE, which screens the individual for immigration violations.

If ICE suspects an individual of being in the country without proper authorization, it can issue an ICE detainer, which requests the jail to hold the individual for up to 48 hours so that ICE can take custody of the person and begin deportation proceedings. ICE can, and frequently does, detain individuals under S-Comm regardless of whether the charges for the original arrest are dropped. From the time S-Comm became nationwide operational in 2013 through 2020, roughly 700,00 individuals were removed from the country.

S-Comm was (and still is) controversial. Numerous local governments, mostly counties, have passed various measures in opposition to the program. Other governments went further, explicitly prohibiting their officers from contacting ICE and prohibiting their agencies from spending money in ways that otherwise could help ICE. However, other governments essentially did the opposite with some states requiring their counties to honor ICE detainer requests.

In our PSJ article, we examined the extent to which state and local governments play a role in implementing federal policy, focusing on the patterns of interaction between federal actors and nonfederal actors implementing S-Comm. Specifically, we examine the extent to which localities and states could hinder or help with the program’s implementation.

To determine what role these subnational policies could play, we collected county-level ICE removal data and information about which states and localities adopted policies aimed at either helping ICE by mandating their agencies honor detainer requests or hindering ICE’s efforts prohibiting that they cooperate with ICE’s detainer requests.

We found that states and counties can indeed play a prominent role. Taking these various other factors into account, counties that passed so-called “sanctuary” ordinances saw roughly 30% fewer deportations. Counties in states that had passed their own state-level “sanctuary” laws saw a similar decline. States that passed legislation requiring their localities to cooperate with ICE saw 44% more deportations.

We also wanted to determine to what extent the presence of the cooperative and noncooperative policies was reflected in what ICE itself was doing. It is one thing for counties and states to simply refuse to cooperate; it is entirely another for ICE to modify its own behavior because of these policies. To do this, we redirected the variables to determine whether they could help explain the extent to which ICE was making detainer requests in the first place. Again, we found that ICE was making fewer detainer requests in states and counties where cooperation with ICE was prohibited and making more in states where the counties were directed to cooperate.

Considering the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement policies, our findings underscore the significant impact of state and local policies on the implementation of federal initiatives, like S-Comm. The presence of subnational policies not only shape the outcome of the policy, but also how the federal agencies, like ICE, behave when implementing federal programs.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schreckhise, W.D. and Chand, D.E. (2021), Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14. Policy Stud J, 49: 1160-1188. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12426

About the Authors

William D. Schreckhise is professor in the University of Arkansas’ Department of Political Science. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington State University’s Department of Political Science. His research interests include policy implementation and bureaucratic discretion. His the author of Evaluating American Democracy and Public Policy.


Daniel E. Chand (“Danny”) received his Ph.D. in Public Policy in the Policy Management specialization at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on the implementation of immigration policy, examining the roles of actors such as immigrant-serving nonprofits, immigration judges, and ICE officers. In addition to PSJ, his work has appeared in journals like Policy Sciences and Voluntas.

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Mixed Messages and Bounded Rationality: The Perverse Consequences of REAL ID for Immigration Policy

by Maureen Stobb, Banks Miller, & Joshua Kennedy

The President and Congress have renewed efforts in the past year to reshape immigration policy. Yet, if history can teach us anything, it is that outcomes in this area tend not to match intent. Our research looks at a clear example of this mismatch, the REAL ID Act, a law aimed at tightening refugee admissions by taking control away from liberal judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Despite its intent, it resulted in more people getting asylum. In our research we ask, what explains this policy gap?

We contend that part of the answer lies in the REAL ID Act’s ambivalent language, a common characteristic of policy concerning undocumented immigrants. The law gave the street-level bureaucrats who decide asylum cases —immigration judges (IJs)— more discretion to deny bogus asylum claims. They no longer had to point to an inconsistency undermining a key aspect of the persecution claim to find the applicant not credible. They could deny based on inconsistencies such as birthdays and wedding dates that have no connection to the asylum claim. At the same time, the law required IJs to consider all the circumstances, potentially reincorporating some of the former rule.

What did IJs do in this situation? They are supposed to follow the precedent in the circuit with jurisdiction over where they sit, but the President controls their hiring and firing, and Congress writes the law and determines their budget. We argue that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, relied on their professional training as lawyers as a shortcut and were considerably more deferential to the circuit courts who read every opinion they write.

We find just that. As the figure below shows, the adoption of the REAL ID Act’s credibility standard enabled significantly closer ideological control by the courts. Before REAL ID, there was very little relationship between the presumed aggregate preferences of the appellate courts on asylum cases and IJ decision making in that circuit. But after the REAL ID Act is implemented by the circuit through the adoption of its standard in precedent, as the percentage of the circuit that is Democratic increases so too does the likelihood of an IJ granting asylum. The impact went from 3 to 52 percentage points.

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Figure 1: REAL ID & the Circuit Courts

We saw an increase in influence for Congress and the President, but it was not nearly as large. We also show this is not just a result of the uniqueness of the first Trump administration.

The findings suggest that any attempts to restrict asylum access through immigration courts during Trump’s second term would require precisely written policies. If the administration and a Republican-controlled Congress pursue such restrictions, vague or ambiguous language could backfire. In cases of unclear policy, IJs will turn to federal courts for guidance—potentially leading to interpretations that run counter to the administration’s goals.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Stobb, Maureen, Banks Miller, and Joshua Kennedy. 2023. Mixed messages & bounded rationality: The perverse consequences of real ID for immigration policy. Policy Studies Journal 51: 667–684. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12486

About the Authors

Maureen Stobb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. Her research focuses on the expansion of judicial power relative to the legislature and the executive, particularly in the policy areas of immigration and citizenship. Her research has been published in various outlets including The Journal of Law & Courts, and Justice System Journal.

Banks Miller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on judicial decision making, intellectual property policy, and immigration policy. Recent work has been published in the Journal of Law & Courts and American Politics Research.


Joshua B. Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. His research of late focuses on political control of the administrative state, and he has also published in the area of unilateral presidential power. His research has appeared in American Politics Research, Research & Politics, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other outlets.

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Not Just the Nation’s Hostess: First Ladies as Policy Actors

by Mary R. Anderson & Jonathan Lewallen

Popular culture likes to view the First Lady as a symbol of American womanhood, the nation’s hostess, fashion icon, and mom-in-chief. Yet, modern First Ladies often develop their own policy priorities and programs, and the Office of the First Lady is integral to modern presidential administrations. In this article we make the case for studying First Ladies as policy actors by examining the audiences to which First Ladies speak, the roles they adopt in doing so, including an explicit policy role, and the degree of substantive policy content in their public speeches and remarks. 

We use archived First Lady public speeches and remarks from 1993-2022 covering First Ladies Clinton, Laura Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden to illustrate that First Ladies actively adopt policy roles across their speeches and other appearances; speak to policy-focused audiences like policy summits, interest groups, and government personnel and often discuss substantive policy issues in these appearances.

First Ladies adopt roles beyond the ceremonial role established by Martha Washington. She also plays the roles of policy advocate and party supporter and leader.  We depart from other scholars in our view that these roles are not “either-or” but rather “both-and,” the First Lady can be both engaging in a ceremonial role AND a policy role. For example, when the First Lady gives a commencement speech, she is acting in a ceremonial role. She may also discuss policy in that speech, in which case she is acting in a policy role, thus she is assuming both roles simultaneously, ceremonial and policy. Our analysis of First Lady roles demonstrates that the combination of Policy + Ceremonial roles is the most common configuration in our data. While First Ladies adopt the Ceremonial role more often than the others, the Policy role is a large part of the First Lady’s activities, about 72% of the data involve a Policy role in some way. 

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We argue that First Ladies are significant policy actors and that they discuss policy when they are addressing various audiences. Our data supports this characterization because we see First Ladies often addressing policy relevant audiences in their activities. Our analysis shows that First Ladies talk to three “clusters” of groups.  Excluding the broad “other” category, First Ladies have spoken most often to national interest groups (14.4%) and at policy events (14%).

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Figure 1: Percentage of First Lady Speeches and Remarks Delivered to Different Audiences

Finally, we find that First Ladies address substantive policy content frequently. We find that First Ladies address substantive policy content in about 63% of their speeches; when we dive more deeply into those observations where the First Lady adopted a Policy role, they addressed substantive policy issues about 90% of the time.  The presence of substantive policy content varies across First Ladies’ audiences as shown in the figure below.  First Ladies since 1993 mentioned some substantive policy issue in about 91% of their remarks to party supporters and 90% to policy events. 

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Figure 2: Speeches and Remarks with Substantive Policy Mentions by Audience

In this article, we challenge the traditional view of the First Lady as a largely ceremonial public figure and behind-the-scenes presidential advisor. Using her public speeches and remarks over a 30-year period we find that First Ladies consistently discuss policy issues across their different audiences and adopt the Policy role in more than three-quarters of their speeches in statements. Over time the role of the First Lady has evolved, their unique position permits them to play a role in policy that might not be obvious at first glance. They are particularly well-situated and well-resourced to engage in the policy process as executive branch actors and thus should be studied more often for their engagement in policymaking. 

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Anderson, Mary and Jonathan Lewallen. 2024. “ Not Just the Nation’s Hostess: First Ladies As Policy Actors.” Policy Studies Journal 00(0): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12558.

About the Authors

Mary Anderson is the brodsky chair for Constitutional Democracy and Culture and professor of Political Science at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI. She studies women and politics and civic participation.



Jonathan Lewallen is an associate professor of political science at the University of Tampa. His research focuses on agenda setting and the policy process and how issues and institutions evolve together over time. Dr. Lewallen’s book Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress was published in 2020 by the University of Michigan Press.

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What lessons do professionals learn about government from implementing policy?

by Patricia Strach

A professional on a recent Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) webinar that we participated in noted that stigma doesn’t just affect people who use drugs (the clients), it also affects the professionals providing services to them. We weren’t surprised. In our interviews, focus groups, and participant observation of roughly 200 professionals, we heard the same frustration, which was backed up with examples of lower salaries, less respect, and few opportunities to use professional discretion.

While researchers have shown that clients or even community members learn lessons about how government works from their direct or indirect interactions, we don’t know what effect policies have on another invested group: professional implementors. Yet professionals in substance-use disorder services—including general healthcare, drug treatment, and harm reduction (such as syringe exchange) programs—are very aware that they have a different experience from professionals working with other clients.

Substance-use disorder services, then, offer a window into how policies designed for marginalized and negatively constructed populations affect the advantaged, policy professionals administering them with broader implications for the true effects of public policy.

In our research, we find that policy implementors learn by proxy: they witness a government that does not care about people who use drugs; they experience a government that is not committed to providing positive care services to their clients and does not value the professionals who work with them; and in witnessing and experiencing together, they learn that the disadvantaged status of people who use drugs affects the benefits and burdens on the professionals who administer them too.

One treatment provider summed up the effect of extensive and proscriptive rules that punish clients at the same time they remove clinical discretion from well-qualified providers as having “less to do …with whether or not they believe the patient. It’s really how much they respect the opinion or the information provided by the clinician. So I think that stigma follows not only the clients and patients that we see, but I think they don’t always believe us.”

These lessons shape implementors’ views of government. They believe government does not care and has chosen not to take meaningful action in ways that are at odds with what their advantaged status—as counselors, nurses, doctors, managers, and executives in health systems—might suggest. They do not see government as supportive, or politics as winnable. Instead, their status as professionals allows them to compare their experience to other professionals’ and their clients’ experience with other clients’, and they recognize the unfairness in how government treats clients and professionals.

Our article, “Learning by Proxy: How Burdensome Policies Shape Policy Implementors Views of Government,” suggests that policy affects more than clients or community members. It spills over to the professionals who implement them, shaping their experience and perspective of government too. Our research offers lessons for scholars of drug policy, policy feedback, administrative burdens, and social construction of target populations.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Strach, Patricia, Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués and Katie Zuber. 2024. “ Learning by Proxy: How Burdensome Policies Shape Policy Implementors’ Views of Government.” Policy Studies Journal 00(0): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12554.

About the Author

Patricia Strach, PhD is Professor, Departments of Political Science and Public Administration & Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) and a fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, SUNY. With Katie Zuber and Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués, she examines the opioid epidemic in local communities, engaging people on the frontlines including judges, lawyers, sheriffs, service providers, elected officials, community activists, and people who use drugs and their families. She is the author most recently of The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929 (Cornell 2023) as well as articles published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Policy Studies Journal, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. She has presented her findings to federal and state policymakers and has appeared on panels across New York State. Strach received the Outstanding Public Engagement in Health Policy Award from the American Political Science Association’s Section on Health Politics and Policy in 2020 and was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard (2008-2010).

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Potholes, 311 reports, and a theory of heterogeneous resident demand for city services

by Scott J. Cook, Samantha Zuhlke, & Robin Saywitz

An important criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of local governments is how – and whether – they respond to the needs of their residents. Sometimes, local governments proactively provide basic services to meet their residents’ needs. Other times, residents make their needs known to government officials by requesting these services. Importantly, not all residents are equally likely to request services from government when government fails to address a need. In this study, we examine which areas are more likely to produce requests for services from government when faced with a common service need: potholes.

We use 311 reports to measure resident demand for specific kinds of services – in our case, pothole repair. Many localities in the U.S. have adopted 311 systems as a way for residents to request government services. For practitioners, 311 systems are a valuable means of connecting with residents. For researchers, 311 reports are a valuable source of data, providing information on what service was requested, when and where the request was made, and how the locality responded to the request. We study potholes because it is easy to measure whether potholes have been serviced, local governments have nearly full autonomy to repair potholes, and residents are widely in favor of reducing potholes. Ultimately, we wanted to understand whether and to what extent requests for pothole repairs varied according to the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of a city neighborhood, anticipating that requests for services made via 311 systems may follow patterns seen in other forms of political participation.

We apply a three-part general model for understanding how local governments provide public services, which breaks down according to need for services, demand for services, and service provision. Need reflects what residents require, demand represents the expression of need by residents to government, and service provision is the action that the government takes to meet the need and/or demand for services. In our study, we focus on how need (the presence of potholes) translates into demand (a 311 request about a pothole placed by a resident).

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Figure 1. General model for local service provision

Our dataset includes 311 reports on potholes in Houston, Texas from 2016 to 2020. Houston is a useful case since it has a long-running 311 system and an economically and demographically diverse population. Potholes were a salient policy priority in Houston during this period. We secured data on the number of potholes proactively filled by the City of Houston in a FOIA request, which we use as a proxy for pothole presence within a census tract. To evaluate area demand, we utilize the number of 311 reports in each census tract. We measure a census tract’s socioeconomic status using a single variable constructed from several measures, including the poverty rate, median household income, and the percentage of residents who are high school and college graduates. We measure race as the percentage of Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents in a tract.

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Figure 2. Total 311 reports about potholes in Houston, TX from 2016 to 2020

We find that tracts with higher percentages of Black and Hispanic residents correlated with higher numbers of potholes. Lower socioeconomic status was also associated with more potholes. Despite being more likely to have potholes, we find that those same areas had fewer 311 reports. Instead, tracts with fewer Black and Hispanic residents, as well as those of higher socioeconomic status, were more likely to file 311 reports. Taken together, these results reveal that those areas of Houston with the most need for pothole remediation are least likely to demand it.

Our findings serve as a note of caution to local governments about the potential danger of overreliance on self-reporting systems like 311 to allocate public services. The case of potholes in Houston demonstrates that demand for services does not always align with need. Consequently, 311 systems have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities along lines of race and socioeconomic status if public administrators assume that individuals are equally likely to engage with these systems. We advise local governments to a) find ways to encourage greater 311 reporting more broadly, and b) proactively provide services, anticipating that some residents will be less likely to request services to meet unmet needs.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Cook, Scott J., Samantha Zuhlke and Robin Saywitz. 2024. “ Potholes, 311 Reports, and a Theory of Heterogeneous Resident Demand For City Services.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 647–669. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12540.

About the Authors

Scott J. Cook is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. The core aim of his research was to improve our ability to effectively learn about political processes from otherwise imperfect data. Examples of this work have been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, and the Annals of Applied Statistics.

Samantha Zuhlke is an assistant professor in the School of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Iowa. Her research examines how individuals relate to government and nonprofit organizations, particularly in the wake of government failure. Her work has been published by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. She previously worked at the National Geographic Society.

Robin Rose Saywitz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Louis University. Her research falls along three, often overlapping lines: environmental policy, political institutions and performance, and the drivers of human capital decisions in the bureaucracy.

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