ISPS ID:
isps24-13
Full citation:
Mayhew, D.R. (May 2024). Commonalities Surrounding Repeal Drives: Prohibition, Right-to-Work, and the Affordable Care Act [Paper presentation]. Congress and History Conference, Washington, D.C.
Abstract:
Three measures enacted by Congress since 1900 have drawn especially prominent repeal
drives—Prohibition, Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act, and the Affordable Care Act. What can
be learned from an investigation of the commonalities surrounding these drives—their causes,
contexts, and effects? I look into the topics of political geography, Congress’s deliberative
content and style, the U.S. system of vertical federalism, the U.S. system of elections, the role of
crises, and the consequences of conflict. One line of takeaway is the following. In each of these
three policy enterprises—Prohibition, 14b, and the ACA—we see a kind of conflict in which
extreme intensity has joined with striking geographic differentiation in views. As a practical
matter, the policymaking process in these cases has enrolled a multiplicity of actors, including
emphatically the states as well as the public, and it has extended across time. All this activity has
arguably constituted the policymaking process. In these instances, this is the way the country
has been making its decisions—jaggedly and extendedly. A congressional statute can be just a
first draft. For their part, the three repeal drives have served as components of policymaking, not
responses to it. Thus also with “backlash.”
Publication date:
2024
Publication type:
Publication name:
Discipline:
Area of study: