On August 22, 1996, President William Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Media and goververnment sources portrayed this act as the most important welfare reform since the passage of Social Security in the New Deal 61 years earlier. The hype around welfare reform overshadowed a significant section of the act entitled, “Title III—Child Support.” This section of the act made major changes in the child support program that is charged with the task of establishing, enforcing and modifying child support orders for children with non-residential parents. This book tells the story of the development and passage of the 1996 child support reforms.

How do advocates for the poor gain influence in American policymaking? Strange Bedfellows argues that groups representing low-income populations compensate for a lack of resources by collaborating with diverse partners in their lobbying efforts. This study develops a theory of coalition influence that explains the mechanisms and conditions of coalition formation and influence, and provides support for the theory through an analysis of one of the most significant social policy changes in recent history. The analysis shows that in the years preceding the federal welfare reform of 1996, advocates collaborated with diverse partners to influence policymaking, coalitions were used as a tool for pooling different types of resources and communicating information, and groups collaborated selectively across issues. Through rigorous theory and rich qualitative analysis, Strange Bedfellows sheds new light on lobbying and influence in policymaking while offering a theoretical framework for understanding the broader role of coalitions in American politics.

Images of poverty shape the debate surrounding it. In 1996, then President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform legislation repealing the principal federal program providing monetary assistance to poor families, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). With the president's signature this originally non-controversial program became the only title of the 1935 Social Security Act to be repealed. The legislation culminated a retrenchment era in welfare policy beginning in the early 1980s. To understand completely the welfare policy debates of the last half of the 20th Century, the various images of poor people that were present must be considered. Visions of Poverty explores these images and the policy debates of the retrenchment era, recounting the ways in which images of the poor appeared in these debates, relaying shifts in images that took place over time, and revealing how images functioned in policy debates to advantage some positions and disadvantage others. Looking to the future, Visions of Poverty demonstrates that any future policy agenda must first come to terms with the vivid, disabling images of the poor that continue to circulate. In debating future reforms, participants-whose ranks should include potential recipients-ought to imagine poor people anew. This ground breaking study in policymaking and cultural imagination will be of particular interest to scholars in rhetorical studies, political science, history, and public policy.

Seldom do we notice, let alone explicitly acknowledge, that public policies set distinct parameters for gender. But as Creating Gender compellingly demonstrates, in reality governments do use policy?to legitimize and support some gender-based behaviors, while undermining others.Looking in depth at the case of welfare reform, but considering a wide range of policy arenas, the authors examine how government policymaking in essence defines the ?proper? nature of males and females. At the heart of their analysis is an effort to resolve questions about how policies determine what women and men must do to be granted standing as good citizens?and what benefits they can subsequently accrue. The result is a clear yet sophisticated exploration of the troublesome, sometimes insidious, ways in which gender ideology works in tandem with conventional political ideologies in the United States today.Cathy Marie Johnson is professor of political science and W. Ford Schumann Faculty Fellow in Democratic Studies at Williams College. Her publications include The Dynamics of Conflict Between Bureaucrats and Legislators. Georgia Duerst-Lahti is professor of political science at Beloit College. She is author of Gender Power, Leadership, and Government. Noelle H. Norton is professor of political science at the University of San Diego. She has written extensively on women in US politics.Contents: Introduction: Making Policy, Making Gender. On Creating Gender. Toward a Suitably Complex Framework for Analysis. Unfolding Gender Paradigms: A History of Sexual Politics in Welfare Policy. Making Masculine Mothers: Vanquishing Feminality. Policy Casts Fathers: Deadbeats and Scofflaws, Good Guys, and Promise Keepers. Gender Ideology Reflected in Practice: The Case of Wisconsin?s Legislature. Measuring ?Gender?s Influence? in Congressional Policymaking. Recognizing the Sexual Politics of Public Policy.