Housing Vouchers: A Case Study of the Partisan Policy Cycle

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.