Author Meets Critics: Eric Patashnik's "Countermobilization"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This panel will discuss Eric Patashnik’s new book, Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Policy feedback theory often focuses on how public policies not only address important problems, but also generate downstream political benefits for the policymakers responsible for enacting them. Yet, sometimes, policies not only fail to generate benefits for those who championed them, but also trigger backlash and mobilize opposition. Although not new, backlash is particularly pervasive in today’s political landscape, affecting nearly every area of U.S. policymaking from abortion rights to the Affordable Care Act.

In Countermobilization, Patashnik develops a new policy-centered theory of backlash. This framework illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. The book uses case studies of issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control to show that backlash politics is fueled by polarization, cultural shifts, and negative feedback from the activist government itself. It also offers crucial insights to help identify and navigate backlash risks. Beyond making an important theoretical contribution, Countermobilization sheds helpful new light on puzzling developments in contemporary U.S. politics.

The panel brings together an impressive group of scholars who have focused on a diverse range of substantive topics while producing important, wide-ranging, and foundational insights pertaining to policy feedback theory.

Sub Unit

• Division 25: Public Policy

Chair

• Matthew Lacombe Case Western Reserve University

Presenters

• Eric M. Patashnik Brown University

• Daniel Béland McGill University

• David A. Hopkins Boston College

• Suzanne Mettler Cornell University

• Mallory E. SoRelle Duke University

• Bryan D. Jones University of Texas at Austin