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Housing Vouchers: A Case Study of the Partisan Policy Cycle
- Social Science History
- Cambridge University Press
- Volume 40, Number 1, Spring 2016
- pp. 63-91
- Article
- Additional Information
Federal housing policy reveals an unexpected political cycle of Republican innovation and Democratic appropriation. The political trajectory of rental housing vouchers since their inception reveals a partisan policy cycle. Vouchers were originally proposed as a Republican alternative to Democratic public housing construction and slowly emerged as a viable component of housing policy in the United States. In the mid-1990s, a shift occurred in which Democrats embraced vouchers and Republicans retreated from their innovation. This article suggests a partisanship model of policy making that both challenges and supplements conventional models of the policy process.