Politics, State discretion and retrenchment in safety net provision:

Abstract

The welfare reforms of the late 1990s in the US granted States increased and varying levels of discretion in programme financing, rulemaking and administration. Scholars have generally assumed that this discretion would lead to retrenchment. We use comparable measures of programme generosity and inclusion from 1994–2014 to examine the relationship between levels of discretion, State political factors and the likelihood of retrenchment. In our descriptive analysis, we find that discretion provides opportunities for both retrenchment and expansion and that these outcomes are shaped by State political factors. In multivariate models, we find a more limited association between State political factors and changes or differences in safety net provision. Read full article here.