Countermoblization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age
The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive political coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize opposition forces, diminishing the power of their supporters and reducing the likelihood of the policies' subsequent entrenchment and expansion. Although backlash is not a new phenomenon, today’s political landscape is distinguished by the frequency and pervasiveness of backlash in nearly every area of US policy-making. The book presents a policy-centered theory of backlash that illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. Drawing on a database of more than 2000 New York Times articles about backlash episodes in the US since the 1960s as well as detailed case studies of issues from immigration and the environment to healthcare and gun control, Patashnik shows that backlash politics is fueled by partisan polarization, reactions to cultural and demographic shifts, and negative policy feedback from activist government itself. The analysis also offers insights into how strategic actors seeking to design durable reforms can identify and manage backlash risks.
Eric M. Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science.
Patashnik is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the University of Virginia, UCLA, and Yale University. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books including Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017) Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008), and Putting Trust in the US Budget: Federal Trust Funds and the Politics of Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 2000). He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and also won the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution during 1995-96, served as President of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and was the editor of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019. Patashnik has held a variety of administrative roles, including chair of the political science department and director of the MPA program at Brown and associate dean and acting dean at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He will be a research fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in spring 2025.
Patashnik received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.