In the fifth week of Political Studies, fellows will turn to contemporary issues of domestic policy, with a focus on understanding how ideas influence policy.

One seminar will introduce students to the approaches and ideas of twentieth-century conservative social science through four great debates in social policy: family structure, poverty, welfare, and crime. The second seminar will explore policy at the intersection of politics and economics, and offer a critical examination of current fault lines: welfare state design, income inequality, and the delicate balance between governmental intervention and economic autonomy.

Charles Fain Lehman on Social Policy at PSP

This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 32 fellows will be selected.

Faculty

Charles Fain Lehman

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, working primarily on the Policing and Public Safety Initiative, and a contributing editor of City Journal. His work on criminal justice, immigration, and social issues has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Tablet, among other publications.

Daniel DiSalvo

Daniel DiSalvo is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York-CUNY.  His scholarship focuses on American political parties, elections, labor unions, state government, and public policy.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

Readings:

  • Adam Keiper, “The Public Interest at 50,” National Affairs, Fall 2015
  • Robert Martinson, “What Works? Questions and Answers About Prison Reform,” The Public Interest, Spring 1974
  • James Coleman, “Equal Schools or Equal Students?,” The Public Interest, Summer 1966
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar, Winter 1993
  • James Q. Wilson, “Crime Amidst Plenty: The Paradox of the Sixties,” in Thinking About Crime (Basic Books, 1975)

Discussion Questions:

  1. What were the social problems that prompted conservative critiques?
  2. Where did Kennedy–Johnson liberalism go awry?
  3. What lessons can we draw from this experience for analysis today?

 

Readings:

  • Greg Weiner, “Moynihan and the Neocons,” National Affairs, Winter 2016
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chs. 2 & 4, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, March 1965
  • William Julius Wilson, Ch. 3, The Truly Disadvantaged (University of Chicago, 1987)
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “How the Great Society ‘Destroyed the American Family,’” The Public Interest, Summer 1992
  • Ta–Nehisi Coates, “Revisiting the Moynihan Report,” The Atlantic, June 17, 2013

Discussion Questions:

  1. Was Moynihan’s focus on family structure merited? Was he just “blaming the victim?” Or were liberals blinding themselves to the role that choice plays in pathology?

Readings:

  • James Q. Wilson, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” The Weekly Standard, October 18, 1999
  • Daniel DiSalvo, “Edward Banfield Revisited,” National Affairs, Summer 2017
  • “Summary of Report,” Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The “Kerner Commission”), 1968
  • Edward Banfield, Chs. 3, 9, & 10, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Little, Brown and Co., 1974)
  • Peter H. Rossi, “The City as Purgatory,” Social Science Quarterly, 51, No. 4, March 1971
  • R. Marmor, “Banfield’s Heresy,” Commentary, July 1972

Discussion Questions:

  1. Is it persuasive to believe that individual behavior produces a persistent underclass?
  2. How much trust should we have in institutions to resolve the problems of the worst-off?

Readings:

  • Robert VerBruggen, “The Influencer,” City Journal, Summer 2022
  • Tom Wolfe, “Mau–Mauing the Flak Catchers,” in Radical Chic & Mau–Mauing the Flak Catchers (FSG, 1971) pp. 117–84
  • Charles Murray, Chs. 4, 12, 13, & 17, Losing Ground (Basic Books, 1984)
  • Christopher Jencks, “How Poor Are the Poor?,” New York Review of Books, May 9, 1985
  • Charles Murray and Christopher Jencks, “‘Losing Ground: An Exchange,’” New York Review of Books, October 24, 1985
  • Mickey Kaus, Ch. 7, The End of Equality (Basic Books, 1992)
  • Robert Rector & Jennifer A. Marshall, “The Unfinished Work of Welfare Reform,” National Affairs, Winter 2013

Discussion Questions:

  1. Was Murray right that welfare drove people to the dole? Or was he, as Jencks put it, a social Darwinist?

Readings:

  • Peter H. Schuck, “James Q. Wilson and American Exceptionalism,” National Affairs, Winter 2016
  • Charles Fain Lehman, “Contra ‘Root Causes,’” City Journal, Summer 2021
  • George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows,” The Atlantic, March 1982
  • Bernard Harcourt, 1, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing (Harvard 2005)
  • George L. Kelling, “How New York Became Safe: The Full Story,” City Journal, Special Issue 2009
  • Peter Moskos, “‘There Is a Tendency to Romanticize the Gutter’: The Rebirth of Times Square, Port Authority and Bryant Park,” Vital City, June 7, 2022

Discussion Questions:

  1. Does the “broken windows” model work? Is it just? And should it remain the model for policing today?

Readings:

  • Plutarch, “The Life of Lycurgus” (excerpt)
  • Matthew 6:1–34, 19:16–30
  • Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 1 (1787)
  • John Locke, Ch. 5, Second Treatise on Government (1690)
  • Bernard Mandeville, “The Grumbling Hive,”Fable of the Bees (1705)

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is political economy?
  2. How does Plutarch’s “Life of Lycurgus” illustrate the idea of a political regime?
  3. Should the object of political economy be to encourage material wealth and comfort amongst its inhabitants, or a certain way of life and character of citizenship?
  4. Why, according to Mandeville, do authority figures describe honor, power, and pride as “vices”? Should they?
  5. What do the hives in Mandeville’s poem represent? What are the trade-offs between the honest and corrupt hive?
  6. How does the introduction of private property and money affect the overall wellbeing of society? Does this view form the basis of modern capitalism?

Readings:

  • Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (selections)
    • i.1.1–13 (pp. 9–13, on sympathy); I.iii (pp. 50–66, the account of our sympathy with the wealthy, as well as the corruption of the moral sentiments). II.ii.2.1–II.ii.3.12 (pp. 82–91, on justice); IV.1.1–IV.2.12 (pp. 179–93, the “invisible hand,” beauty and utility, the role of government)
  • Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections)
    • i. (pp. 13–24, the division of labor); I.ii.1–5 (pp. 25–30, barter and trade); IV.ix.51 (p. 687, natural system of liberty)

Discussion Questions:

  1. According to Adam Smith, is man naturally sympathetic to his fellow men? What human behaviors and institutions does sympathy account for?
  2. How does the “invisible hand” operate?
  3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the division of labor in society?
  4. What does Smith mean by “natural liberty”?

Readings:

  • Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (selections)
  • Henry Clay, Selections from “Speech on the Tariff” (1832)
  • John Taylor of Caroline, Tyranny Unmasked (1822) (selections)
  • Oren Cass, “Trump’s Most Misunderstood Proposal,” The Atlantic, September 2024

Discussion Questions:

  1. Does government intervention in the economy favor one class over the other? What is the relationship between political freedom and economic freedom, according to Friedman?

Readings:

  • President Barack Obama, “Speech on Inequality,” December 4, 2013
  • Peter Wehner and Robert Beschel, Jr., “How to Think About Inequality,” National Affairs, Spring 2012

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are the causes of rising inequality and decreased mobility, according to President Obama? Where do Wehner and Beschel agree with Obama, and where do they disagree?
  2. How do Obama’s proposed solutions compare with Wehner’s and Beschel’s?
  3. What is the role of the government in addressing inequality?
  4. How would you characterize the debate over the measurement of inequality?

Readings:

  • Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker (2018) (selections)
  • Watch: Raj Chetty, Creating Equality of Opportunity in America: New Insights from Big Data, Dartmouth College, May 10, 2023
  • Brian Riedl, “Spending, Taxes, and Deficits: A Book of Charts,” Manhattan Institute, 2024
  • James Piereson, “The Redistribution Fallacy,” Commentary, September 2015

Discussion Questions:

  1. Where does Cass think that “conservative” free-market policies went wrong?
  2. What is his “working hypothesis” for how a new kind of conservative might respond?
  3. What factors does Raj Chetty associate with economic opportunity? What tools does Chetty use to measure this?
  4. How would you characterize the changes in the US Federal budget since the 1960s?
  5. Why, according to Piereson, are US fiscal policies largely unable to reduce inequality?

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Justin Driver

Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes on constitutional law and is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. He has written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2021, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2024, President Biden appointed him to serve on the U.S. Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise.

Biography Image

Adam J. White

Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.