Wage wars: Institutional politics, WPA wages, and the struggle for US social policy

The WPA was the most expensive and politically prominent U.S. social progra m of the 1930s, and the generosity and very nature of U.S. social policy in its formative years was contested through the WPA. In this article, an ins titutional politics theory of social policy is elaborated that incorporates the influence of both institutional conditions and political actors: Insti tutions mediate the influence of political actors. Specifically it is argue d that underdemocratized political systems and patronage-oriented party sys tems dampen the cause of generous social spending and the impact of those s truggling for it. State actors, left-party regimes, and social movements sp ur social policy, but only under favorable institutional conditions. To app raise this theory, key Senate roll-call votes on WPA wage rates are examine d, as well as state-level variations in WPA wages at the end of the 1930s. The analyses, which include multiple regression and qualitative comparative analysis, support the theory.