IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/polsoc/v41y2022i2p231-246..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Race, power, and policy: understanding state anti-eviction policies during COVID-19
[Pandemic politics: Timing state-level social distancing responses to COVID-19]

Author

Listed:
  • Jamila Michener

Abstract

In the United States, striking racial disparities in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates were one of the core patterns of the virus. These racial disproportionalities were a result of structural factors—laws, rules, and practices embedded in economic, social, and political systems. Public policy is central among such structural features. Policies distribute advantages, disadvantages, benefits, and burdens in ways that generate, reinforce, or redress racial inequities. Crucially, public policy is a function of power relations, so understanding policy decisions requires attentiveness to power. This paper asseses statistical associations between racial power and state anti-eviction policies. Charting the timing of state policy responses between March 2020 and June 2021, I examine correlations between response times and racial power as reflected in state populations, voting constituencies, legislatures, and social movement activities. Ultimately, I do not find any significant associations. The null results underscore the complexities and difficulties of studying race, power, and public policy with theoretical nuance and empirical care. While the findings leave us with much to learn about how racial power operates, the conceptualization and theorizing offered in the paper, instructively underscore the value of centering racial power in analyses of public policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jamila Michener, 2022. "Race, power, and policy: understanding state anti-eviction policies during COVID-19 [Pandemic politics: Timing state-level social distancing responses to COVID-19]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(2), pages 231-246.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:41:y:2022:i:2:p:231-246.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/polsoc/puac012
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Béland, 2010. "The Idea of Power and the Role of Ideas," Political Studies Review, Political Studies Association, vol. 8(2), pages 145-154, May.
    2. Wasow, Omar, 2020. "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 638-659, August.
    3. Gause, LaGina, 2022. "Revealing Issue Salience via Costly Protest: How Legislative Behavior Following Protest Advantages Low-Resource Groups," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 259-279, January.
    4. King, Desmond S. & Smith, Rogers M., 2005. "Racial Orders in American Political Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(1), pages 75-92, February.
    5. Warner, Mildred E. & Zhang, Xue & Rivas, Marcela González, 2020. "Which states and cities protect residents from water shutoffs in the COVID-19 pandemic?," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    6. Korpi, Walter, 1974. "Conflict, Power and Relative Deprivation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(4), pages 1569-1578, December.
    7. Chris T. Owens, 2005. "Black Substantive Representation in State Legislatures from 1971–1994," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(4), pages 779-791, December.
    8. Paul S. Martin, 2003. "Voting's Rewards: Voter Turnout, Attentive Publics, and Congressional Allocation of Federal Money," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(1), pages 110-127, January.
    9. Paul Lewis, 2005. "Can State Review of Local Planning Increase Housing Production?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 173-200.
    10. Corianne Scally, 2012. "The Past and Future of Housing Policy Innovation: The Case of US State Housing Trust Funds," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 127-150.
    11. Kay Jowers & Christopher Timmins & Nrupen Bhavsar & Qihui Hu & Julia Marshall, 2021. "Housing Precarity & the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts of Utility Disconnection and Eviction Moratoria on Infections and Deaths Across US Counties," NBER Working Papers 28394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Megan E. Hatch, 2017. "Statutory Protection for Renters: Classification of State Landlord–Tenant Policy Approaches," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 98-119, January.
    13. Beth Reingold & Adrienne R. Smith, 2012. "Welfare Policymaking and Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in U.S. State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(1), pages 131-147, January.
    14. Matthew C. Fellowes & Gretchen Rowe, 2004. "Politics and the New American Welfare States," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(2), pages 362-373, April.
    15. Victoria Basolo & Corianne P. Scally, 2008. "State innovations in affordable housing policy: Lessons from California and New Jersey," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 741-774, January.
    16. Peter Morriss, 2006. "Steven Lukes on the Concept of Power," Political Studies Review, Political Studies Association, vol. 4(2), pages 124-135, May.
    17. Michael Tesler, 2012. "The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 690-704, July.
    18. Reny, Tyler T. & Newman, Benjamin J., 2021. "The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence: Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd Protests," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(4), pages 1499-1507, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Béland & Alex Jingwei He & M Ramesh, 2022. "COVID-19, crisis responses, and public policies: from the persistence of inequalities to the importance of policy design [The impact of COVID-19 on gender equality]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(2), pages 187-198.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christos Mavridis & Orestis Troumpounis & Maurizio Zanardi, 2022. "Protests and Police Militarization," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0122, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    2. Nupia Martínez, Oscar & Álvarez Gallo, Carlos Andrés, 2024. "The Impact of Massive Protests on Individual Attitudes," Documentos CEDE 21190, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    3. Freitas Monteiro, Teresa & Prömel, Christopher, 2024. "Local far-right demonstrations and nationwide public attitudes toward migration," Discussion Papers 2024/3, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    4. Mildred E Warner & Paige M Kelly & Xue Zhang, 2023. "Challenging austerity under the COVID-19 state," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(1), pages 197-209.
    5. Ramírez-Álvarez, Aurora Alejandra, 2019. "Land titling and its effect on the allocation of public goods: Evidence from Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Chenoweth, Erica & Hamilton, Barton H. & Lee, Hedwig & Papageorge, Nicholas W. & Roll, Stephen & Zahn, Matthew V., 2022. "Who Protests, What Do They Protest, and Why?," IZA Discussion Papers 15697, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Matthias Dahm & Robert Dur & Amihai Glazer, 2009. "Lobbying of Firms by Voters," Working Papers 080926, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    8. Faith Bradley & William D. Schreckhise & Daniel E. Chand, 2017. "Explaining States’ Responses to the REAL ID Act: the Role of Resources, Political Environment, and Implementor Attitudes in Complying with a Federal Mandate," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(3), pages 877-897, September.
    9. Ralph I. Williams & Torsten M. Pieper & Franz W. Kellermanns & Joseph H. Astrachan, 2019. "Family business goal formation: a literature review and discussion of alternative algorithms," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 329-349, September.
    10. Leishman, Chris & Aminpour, Fatemeh & Baker, Emma & Beer, Andrew & Crowe, Adam & Goodall, Zoë & Horton, Ella & Jacobs, Keith & Lester, Laurence & Maclennan, Duncan, 2022. "Australia’s COVID-19 pandemic housing policy responses," SocArXiv yef47, Center for Open Science.
    11. Malat, Jennifer & Mayorga-Gallo, Sarah & Williams, David R., 2018. "The effects of whiteness on the health of whites in the USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 148-156.
    12. Zheng Yan & Wenqian Robertson & Yaosheng Lou & Tom W. Robertson & Sung Yong Park, 2021. "Finding leading scholars in mobile phone behavior: a mixed-method analysis of an emerging interdisciplinary field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9499-9517, December.
    13. Daniel Béland & Michael Howlett & Philip Rocco & Alex Waddan, 2020. "Designing policy resilience: lessons from the Affordable Care Act," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 53(2), pages 269-289, June.
    14. Valero, Diana & Cook, Jess & Lee, Angus & Browne, Alison L. & Ellis, Rowan & Pancholi, Vidya Sagar & Hoolohan, Claire, 2023. "Addressing water poverty under climate crisis: implications for social policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120704, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Kovenock, Dan & Roberson, Brian, 2011. "Non-partisan ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts and policy outcomes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 728-739.
    16. Alberto Alesina & Marco Tabellini, 2024. "The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 5-46, March.
    17. Melissa Deckman & Laurel Elder & Steven Greene & Mary‐Kate Lizotte, 2023. "Abortion, religion, and racial resentment: Unpacking the underpinnings of contemporary abortion attitudes," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 104(2), pages 140-152, March.
    18. Stephen Malpezzi, 2023. "Housing affordability and responses during times of stress: A preliminary look during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 9-40, January.
    19. Julia Azari & Marc J. Hetherington, 2016. "Back to the Future? What the Politics of the Late Nineteenth Century Can Tell Us about the 2016 Election," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 667(1), pages 92-109, September.
    20. Juniyanti, Lila & Purnomo, Herry & Kartodihardjo, Hariadi & Prasetyo, Lilik Budi & Suryadi, & Pambudi, Eko, 2021. "Powerful actors and their networks in land use contestation for oil palm and industrial tree plantations in Riau," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:41:y:2022:i:2:p:231-246.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.