Theories of the Welfare State and the Formative Years of U.S. Social Policy

这是一项关于美国社会政策发展的研究。它将侧重于现代国家社会政策的形成年代，在20世纪30年代和40年代，当社会保障法和相关立法和计划颁布时，它将分析这一时期社会政策的决定因素。分析将基于在跨国社会政策文献中突出的三个理论模型：社会和经济理论、国家中心或制度理论和政治理论。制度政治理论是一些政治理论和制度理论的综合，它认为制度环境为政治设定了界限，限制了政治行为者的有效性。为了评价这些理论模型，将采用一些比较和定量的策略。将比较二十年来国家一级社会政策制定的若干事件。其他比较将考察社会项目的不同命运，国家层面对社会支出的投票，以及州层面的社会政策结果。在这些分析中，将汇集1936年至1950年的横截面和时间序列。此外，定性比较分析将被用来检验制度政治理论的组合或相互作用的主张。最后，四个精心挑选的案例将在整个时期进行审查。这项研究不仅将增加我们对这一时期遗留下来的社会政策和项目的实质性理解，而且还将测试社会政策如何发展的一般理论，这些理论也将适用于当前的辩论。这些知识将为今后做出正确的社会政策决策提供科学依据。

This is a study of the development of social policy in the United States. It will focus on the formative years of modern, national social policy, in the 1930s and 1940s, when the Social Security Act and related legislation and programs were enacted, and it will analyze the determinants of social policy during this period. The analyses will be based on three theoretical models that are prominent in the cross-national literature on social policy: social and economic, state-centered or institutional, and political theories. A synthesis of some political and institutional theories, the institutional politics theory, holds that institutional circumstances set boundaries to politics which constrains the effectiveness of political actors. To appraise these theoretical models, a number of comparative and quantitative strategies will be employed. Several episodes of social policy-making at the national level will be compared across the two decades. Other comparisons will examine the varying fates of social programs, votes at the national level for social spending, and state-level social policy outcomes. Among the analyses will be pooled cross-sections and time-series from 1936 through 1950. In addition, qualitative comparative analyses will be employed to test the combinational or interactional claims of the institutional politics theory. Finally, four carefully chosen cases will be examined across the entire period. This study will not only increase our substantive understanding of the social policies and programs that have endured as the legacy of this period, but it will test general theories of how social policy is developed that will also apply to current debates. This knowledge will improve the scientific basis for making the correct social policy decisions in future.