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Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests, and Policy Variance: Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Britain and the U.S.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Randall Hansen  and
Desmond King
Randall Hansen
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Desmond King
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

A burgeoning literature in comparative politics has sought to incorporate ideas into political analysis. In this article the authors categorize the main ways in which this incorporation has occurred—ideas as culture, ideas as expert knowledge, ideas as solutions to collective action problems, and ideas as programmatic beliefs—and explicate the different assumptions about causality and the permanence of ideas implied by these different frameworks. This theoretical exercise is then applied to an empirical examination of eugenic ideas about sterilization and immigration and their influence on public policy in Britain and the United States between the world wars. Given that ideational ideas were (broadly) equally powerful in both countries, the cases provide a basis for shedding light on when and how extant ideational frameworks influence public policy. Employing primary sources the authors conclude that ideas remain powerful expressions of societal interests but depend upon key carriers to realize such expressions.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , January 2001 , pp. 237 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2001

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References

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19 This standard meets the falsifiabihty requirement.

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29 Resolution passed at meeting of the executive council of Central Association for Mental Welfare, PRO MH58/103July 8,1929. The association had links with the Eugenics Society, and it was an active promoter of sterilization.

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48 Their origin cannot simply be that restrictive immigration policies were easier to adopt than sterilization, as the U.S. enacted policies in both areas.

49 Evidence submitted by the Eugenics Society to L. G. Brock's Sterilization Committee, PRO, MH51/228 31100, March 1, 1933, 26.

50 Ibid.

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53 Report of the meeting between the minister of health and deputation of associations, PRO, MH58/100, May 23, 1935, 2.

54 Ibid. See also Macnicol (fn. 22).

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74 Peter Gourevitch put this point well: “To become policy, ideas must link up with politics—the mobilization of consent for policy. Politics involves power. Even a good idea cannot become policy if it meets certain kinds of opposition, and a bad idea can become policy if it is able to obtain support.” Gourevitch, “Keynesian Politics: The Political Sources of Economic Policy Choices,” in Hall (fn. 5), 87–88.

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79 At the time of the Brock Committee's appointment, servants at the Ministry of Health expressed the hope that the Brock inquiry, by its specialist nature, would be buffered from the fears of public opinion that a royal commission would face; minute, Ministry of Health, PRO, MH58/104A, March 21, 1932.

80 For some of the existing literature on ideational carriers, see Risse-Kappen, Thomas, “Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies,” World Politics 43 (July 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Berman (fn. 1), introduction. From the constructivist literature (examining the role of “norm entrepreneurs” in constructing the limits of acceptable and unacceptable behavior), see Finnemore, M. and Sikkink, K., “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998), 896–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lessig, L., “The Regulation of Social Meaning,” University of Chicago Law Review 62 (1998), 968—73Google Scholar. On constructivism as an ideational approach, see Checkel, Jeffrey T., “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50 (January 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 One could think of other examples. The idea of “Europe” has been used (and abused) many times by politicians who embedded their preferred policies in it. Crudely, German and (especially) French politicians have argued that common agricultural policy (which ensures above-market prices for farm products, resulting in oversupply and the exclusion of imports from developing countries), is essential to the construction of Europe; British politicians, governing a country where agriculture is a small concern, have not seen it that way. Less crudely, international relations theorists have argued that politicians invoked the idea of Europe in the late 1980s to overcome “Eurosclerosis” when European integration stalled. In doing so, they overcame the problem of multiple equilibria; that is, if there are many ways in which integration can go forward, and each is Pareto optimal, then how do states agree among them? Ideas—in this case the idea of mutual recognition of goods and services as the foundation of further European integration—overcome the problem by selecting one as “the best.” See Garrett, Geoffrey and Weingast, Barry R., “Ideas, Interests and Institutions: Constructing the European Communities' Internal Market,” in Goldstein, Judith and Keohane, Robert, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. See Blyth (fn. 75), 241–44.

82 Pierson, “Not Just What, but When: Issues of Timing and Sequence in Comparative Politics” (Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Boston, September 1998).

83 We thank Kathleen Thelen for drawing our attention to this issue.

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86 Adler and Haas (fn. 7), 380.

87 The point relates to recent work on struggles over issue definition; politics is about defining issues in the way that serves an actor's ends. Taking the gun control example, if the NRA succeeds in denning gun control as a matter of protecting the American constitution, it is highly likely to check gun control efforts; if its opponents define it as an issue of saving children, the opposite will obtain. See Baumgartner, Frank R., Conflict and Rhetoric in French Policymaking (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)Google Scholar. The eugenic cases highlight how this process of issue definition will be buffeted by exogenous developments; those who wished to define eugenics as an issue of the rights of the individual against oppressive state power saw their argument carried by developments in Nazi Germany.

88 Gourevitch (fn. 74); Krasner, Stephen, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Robertson, David, “Political Con-flirt and Lesson-Drawing,” Journal of Public Policy 11 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Naturally, the whole process can go in reverse: ideas viewed as disreputable can discredit the actors proposing them, while ideas that might otherwise have support become discredited when associated with disreputable characters. A good example of the former would be socialist ideas in the postwar U.S.: discredited by association with the Soviet Union, they brought down any brave soul who publicly advocated them. An example of latter would be appeasement: it has been wholly delegitimized by Neville Chamberlain's naive and clumsy policy toward Adolf Hitler.

90 Walsh (fn. 77).