University of Chicago Press

Political science has been relatively silent about family, associating it with social welfare policy, gender, or the private sphere. However, family is also an important part of day-to-day politics, and legislators use family to accomplish a wide range of policy goals. This paper provides a theoretical framework for thinking about family as a part of the policy process that justifies policy positions, administers goods and services, and determines eligibility. I test the theoretical framework by evaluating where and how family is used in the policy process with a quantitative analysis of congressional speeches, the U.S. code, and federal regulations. Finally, a brief look at tax policy in the 1990s shows how family can be incorporated into political research. Ultimately, political actors use concepts of family across a broad spectrum of policy areas, including those not traditionally thought of as “family oriented,” suggesting a number of important implications and research questions for further study.

In comparative political economy the United States is denominated a “liberal market economy” characterized by market-based labor policy, but American political development studies suggest that national-level comparisons, which assume government institutions are a coherent package, may be misguided. In the decentralized American polity, many combinations of state-market relationships have emerged as state governments invest in labor market performance and economic agents adjust their market strategies. Analyses that conceive regimes as sets of complementary institutions that constrain individuals and government officials have difficulty explaining changing patterns of policy and market organization. This article investigates these policy developments to make a constructionist argument that departures from historical paths are possible because institutional agents can reflect on performance and adjust strategies. Building on the political development insight about the complexity of governing authority as well as the comparativists' critique of economic convergence, the article argues that innovation in America's composite regime is best understood against the institutional legacies of labor and race relations regulation. The argument is illustrated by evidence of the diversity of labor market policies in the states during the 1990s.

Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) promise greater alignment of development efforts with universal norms, as well as a focus on the root causes of poverty. While HRBAs have been widely adopted across the development sector, there is little systematic evidence about the actual impact of this strategic shift. Evaluating the effectiveness of HRBAs is challenging because various non-governmental and other organizations have developed very different understandings of how to apply a rights-based framework in the development context. This essay takes a step toward the rigorous evaluation of HRBAs by offering a comprehensive review of rights-based programming implemented by Plan International, a child-centered organization. It shows that Plan's adoption of HRBA-inspired strategies has transformed its interactions with local communities and added an explicit focus on the state as the primary duty bearer. There is evidence for a systematic increase in individual rights awareness, greater ownership exercised by community organizations, and the application of evidence-based advocacy aimed at scaling up proven program activities. But Plan's peculiar brand of HRBA neglects collaboration with domestic social movements and civil society, largely avoids a more confrontational approach towards the state, and has yet to produce evidence for regular successful rights claims by disadvantaged communities against governmental representatives at local, regional, or national levels. The study also reveals a limited ability of Plan to address disparities and discrimination within local communities, as well as a need to define clearly the organization's own accountability and duties deriving from its presence in local communities across more than fifty developing nations.

This paper argues that the study of politics as a liberal art is under assault today, both from outside pressures on liberal arts education and from the discipline’s vision of the study of politics as a narrow “political science.”

For many contemporary liberals, toleration has become liberalism's defining characteristic, with individual rights being maintained more or less unconditionally. Because Hobbes stressed so emphatically the conditional character of nearly all individual rights and their dependence on sovereign authority, he is typically viewed by liberals as an absolutist who was indifferent, if not hostile, to toleration. This typical view, however, neglects liberalism's own absolutism, which necessarily supports and qualifies toleration. Hobbes's liberalism is paradoxical, but the paradox of Hobbes's liberalism not only reflects, but also helps to clarify, the paradox of liberalism per se.