Nancy Naples Mary Bernstein University of Connecticut
This comparative study of family policy in two national contexts will study: (1) the impact of structural, historical, and cultural factors on the development of and changes in family policy over time, (2) the influence of social movements on policy change in different legal and political contexts, and (3) the effect of structural features of the state on social movement strategies and choice of goals. In this multi-method qualitative study, the theoretical framework draws on four different, but overlapping approaches: theories of the welfare state, socio-legal scholarship, studies of sexual citizenship, and social movement theory to theorize the mechanisms that explain changes over time in family policies in different social and political contexts. The research seek to better understand policies that recognize diverse family relationships through comparing the history, political and legal context, social movement activities, policy debates, and family policy outcomes in Australia and the U.S. These two countries are similar in regime type, political structure, and legal systems but differ in many important aspects including governmental authority to regulate marriage policy, referendum procedures, and past policy frameworks. By examining two countries with federated political structures, the study provides the data to test the theory that cultural factors, including discursive constructions of family, citizen, gender, and sexuality coupled with a structural and historical analysis, can explain cross-national and intra-nation variation in family policies.
The research goals are to: (1) test the influence of discursive frames on the timing and substance of family policy changes; (2) explain the continuity and change in constructions of the relationship between the market, family, and the state in debates over family policies; (3) analyze the role of social movements and opposing movements in the timing and substance of changes in family policies in different national and sub-national contexts; (4) understand the relationship between structural, medium-term and short-term features of the state, the law, social movements and changes in family policies; and (5) analyze the impact of economic and political forces external to the nation-state on the construction of family policies. The hypotheses are that: (1) Discursive constructions of the relationship between family, gender, sexuality, citizen and the state will explain differences in the timing of policy adoption, the trajectory of change over time, the content of specific policies, and the consequences for gender and sexuality of the adoption of specific family policies. (2) Social movement activists adopt strategies and choose discourse based on their interpretation of political opportunities and the relative importance they give to attaining mobilization, cultural, and political goals. (3) Institutional frameworks, the strength of state bureaucracies, and the content and form of existing social policies influence the form (strategies used by movement activists) and level (scale of resources) of social movement mobilization. (4) Structural differences in legal systems both within and across nations as well as the extent to which international law or pressure is present and acknowledged as legitimate, influence the pattern of change in family policies over time.
The broader impacts of this research include: (1) providing a more thorough understanding of the relationship between state structure and family policy in the context of the economic restructuring of the welfare state; (2) furthering the academic training of graduate students in both research and course work; and (3) disseminating findings to policy-makers and other non-academic constituencies.
