"THAT'S NOT WHAT WE MEANT TO DO": Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America

"THAT’S NOT WHAT WE MEANT TO DO": Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America.

By Steven M. Gillon. Norton. 288 pp. $25.95

Attention, policy wonks: University of Oklahoma historian Gillon has written a delightfully subversive book about how reform legislation goes awry. With no handwringing, no conspiracy theories about forces of evil undermining good works, he recounts the unintended postenactment journeys of five laws. Along the way, he demonstrates that the only thing predictable about reform is that its consequences are unpredictable. He starts with the 1935 Social Security Act’s little-debated provision to help young widows and their children. With the breakdown of the nuclear family, this modest widows’ entitlement mushroomed into a $13 billion program (eventually Aid to Families with Dependent Children) that mostly benefited families with live but absent fathers. This development in turn provoked another policy shift, welfare reform, and a change in the national consensus about government aid to the poor.

With the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, Congress sought to move thousands of long-term mentally ill residents from large, out-of-the-way hospitals into community-based settings, where they would receive continuing support from a network of mental health centers. But subsequent congresses cared more about Vietnam, civil rights, low-income housing, and urban unrest than about funding the community services. The released hospital patients often ended up on the streets, and homelessness became a political issue.

Gillon also traces the curious history of racial preferences. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly barred quotas, but two federal regulatory agencies claimed the authority to implement affirmative action, a policy that in practice came very close to quotas. The courts initially supported the regulators, and affirmative action became widespread in both the public and private sectors. Then the backlash arrived. Politicians campaigned against affirmative action, state ballot measures sought to eliminate racial preferences, and the courts imposed stricter constitutional limits. A policy that had been rejected by Congress thus slipped in through the other two branches and became a defining political issue.

These and the book’s other tales (about the Immigration Act of 1965 and campaign finance reform) may sound disheartening, but I found them reassuring. Policymaking is about compromise, and the compromises don’t end when a bill becomes law. Even if reformers realize all their goals in Congress— and they rarely do—they still must face implementers in the executive branch, successor congresses, lawyers using the courts to muddy the waters, and evolving social mores. Consequently, getting the policy right is not the only thing, or even the most important thing. Giving voice to the diverse interests is closer to the mark. Men and women must be able to exercise their complex, varied, conflicting, and unpredictable wills through the labyrinth of politics and governance. With his stories of apparent blunders and shortsightedness, Gillon reveals that the system works.

—Marty Linsky

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