Doctoral Dissertation Research: Policy, Culture, and Welfare Reform

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This doctoral dissertation project examines the process of welfare policy-making by showing how the definition of "welfare" affects the form and fate of public assistance programs in America. Welfare touches on many aspects of American life, including the importance of the work ethic, compassion, individualism, and the family. The theory suggests that national-level interest groups attempt to favor some of these aspects of welfare over others in an effort to establish the terms of political debate and ultimately determine policy outcomes. This policy framing process unfolded during the nation's most radical and contested period of welfare reform: the struggle over guaranteed income programs during the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter administrations. Following the first PI's approach to cultural analysis, the project outlines the production, selection, and institutionalization of policy frames during this period. In addition, it illustrates the interaction between the frames used in popular discourse, the formulation of specific welfare policies, and the political fate of guaranteed income programs. Findings then will be compared to more recent welfare reform attempts in 1988 and 1996. This process will be analyzed using documents collected from three presidential libraries, organizational archives, and the media, in conjunction with pre-existing interview transcripts conducted during the 1960s and 1970s, and new retrospective interviews to be conducted as part of this project.