We investigate whether the decision to experiment with novel policies is influenced by electoral incentives. Our empirical setting is the U.S. welfare reform in 1996, which marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. We find that electoral incentives matter: governors...

Introduction -- The state of poverty : TANF recipients -- The response to poverty and inequality : the welfare state -- Demonizing the single-mother family : the path to welfare reform -- The welfare bureaucracy -- Work and the low-wage labor market : mothers and children -- Welfare reform and...

The political economy of the mainstreaming project -- Research methods -- Welfare in social and historical context -- The grand narrative as lived experience -- Bureaucracy at work in welfare-to-work -- The embeddedness of market rationality -- Conditions of employment -- Does low wage work pay?...