Reconsidering Policy Feedback

Abstract

Drawing on examples from the history and politics of Social Security in the United States, this article assesses early and more recent contributions to the policy feedback literature to clarify the meaning of this concept before sketching a new research agenda on policy feedback. As argued, three new streams of policy feedback scholarship have emerged since the late 1990s. Because these new research streams have seldom been discussed together, this article makes a direct contribution to the ongoing social science debate about the nature and the role of policy feedback in advanced industrial societies.