Bringing welfare state theories to the states: How ideas, actors, and state structures affect welfare reform trajectories in Minnesota and Wisconsin

This research examines welfare reform in Minnesota and Wisconsin from 1984 through 2005. Despite their similarities, these two states developed different welfare reform trajectories. Wisconsin consistently enacted punitive policies that emphasized immediate employment and imposed strong work requirements. Minnesota initially passed rather generous reforms that provided extra support to recipients who worked and maintained aid to those who did not. Minnesota's system became less generous by the early 2000s, due to national welfare reform and changed political conditions within the state. Yet, it was still less punitive than Wisconsin's. This project draws on welfare state research to consider how political, cultural, and institutional factors shaped reform in the two states. The main finding suggests a conjoined influence of the policymaking process, specifically the extent to which welfare reform was linked to a key political figure, carried out in or outside of the legislative arena, and characterized by political conflict or consensus, and cultural frames. The fact that welfare reform in Wisconsin was highly politicized, conflictual, and linked to Governor Thompson, while in Minnesota it was more depoliticized, consensual, and carried out in considerable part by bipartisan groups and state agency staff members, played a key role in explaining the states' divergent policy trajectories. In the politicized policy environment in Wisconsin, cultural frames referencing negative interpretations of the welfare system and welfare recipients were articulated with greater frequency than they were in Minnesota. In the depoliticized policy environment in Minnesota, the predominant cultural frames circumvented negative assumptions about the welfare system and recipients more so than they did in Wisconsin. The cultural frames created in these contexts provided a rationale for different versions of welfare reform.