Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda

In the past quarter-century, conservatives in the U. S. have implemented a policy agenda featuring balanced budgets, lower taxes, fewer social programs, and family values. This book examines the impact of this campaign on contemporary public policy, and on the future of social justice and democracy. Leading experts on social welfare, social security, housing and urban development, health care, and economic policy, review these developments, and analyze the impact of the conservative agenda, particularly on the Clinton administration.In this comprehensive collection of new essays, the conservative notion that dependency on government is the fundamental problem plaguing America, is challenged. On the contrary, the contributors find that conservative policies only lead to a cycle of recision. The effort to balance the budget, sustained military expenditure, the devolution of social programs, and welfare reform have lead to increased poverty and a future cost to society.Included in this collection are leading experts on social and economic policy including Zillah Eisenstein, Frances Fox Piven, Ann Markusen, Harvey Molotch, James Petras, Jill Quadagno, Judith Stacey and Ron Walters.

Clarence Y. H. Lo is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He is the author of Small Property versus Big Government: Social Origins of the Property Tax Revolt (University of California Press, 1990, revised edition 1995) and writes articles about theories of the state and conservative social movements.
Michael Schwartz is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of The Power Structure of American Business (Mizurchi and Schwartz, CUP, 1987), and The Social Construction of Industry (McGuire, Granovetter and Schwartz, CUP, 1996). He writes extensively in the areas of economic and political sociology, and social stratification.