REFERENCES

^Richard Cloward, "Are the Poor Left Out," in Chaim Waxman, Poverty:Power and Pol i t ics (Grosset, 1968), pp. 159-170.

Seligman, Aspects of Poverty (Crowell, 1968), p. 293.

Levitan, The Great Society 's Poor Law (Johns Hopkins, 1969), p. 86.

a description of a similar problem in the Detroit anti-povertyprogram see: Murray Seidler, "Some Part ic ipant Observer Reflections onDetro i t ' s Community Action Program," Urban Affairs Quarterly, V, No. 2,(December, 1969), p. 195.

Earl Raab, "What War and Which Poverty," in Chaim Waxman, Poverty;Power and Pol i t ics (Grosset, 1969), p. 241.

Rogers Marshall, "Public Part ic ipat ion and the Pol i t ics of Poverty,Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, V (Sage, 1971), pp. 474-475.

REVENUE SHARING AND THE POORJoseph Cepuran

Unive r s i ty of Wisconsin—Extension

General revenue-shar ing has been c h a r a c t e r i z e d as p r o -viding a boost to policy-making iniative at the state and locallevels of government. Now hearings and discussions are fo-cusing on the adoption of special revenue-sharing to replacegrant-in-aid programs.-^ An important consideration of such adevelopment is the possible impact on the poor and other mi-norities. To estimate the impact of the change, i t is neces-sary to discuss the present policy-making scheme.

I. THE GRANT-IN-AID SYSTEM

While Phillip Monypenny expresses the opinion that revenue-sharing will not result in any change in who gets what, heraises an intriguing point:

Congress, stimulated by the federal administrativeagencies and at times by associations of state govern-mental officials and administrators, has acted as statelegislature and city council to the nation.^

This argument represents a reasonable formulation of thecomplaint of those desiring local control and, in fact, isaccurate. It is necessary, however, to attach two (Qualifyingpoints which alter the impact of the statement. First, unlikestate legislatures and city councils which operate in unitarysystems, congress must leave enough room to permit state legis-latures and local welfare boards to exercise discretion bothto reject programs and to alter them at the margin. Second,the constituency of the congress, as Monypenny observes, isdifferent from the constituency of the state legislature andcity council.

II. THE ROLE OF CONGRESS

The need for flexibility is important beyond the obviousrequirements of a federal system. As Ted Lowi has pointed out.

one of the reasons for granting discretion is the avoidance ofconflict. Rather than resolve the differences at the nationallevel, the general outlines are drawn and the matter is pusheddown to the states, along with money designed to ease thefight.3

Congress becomes involved in programs only after it isclearly a necessary action. For example, by 1935 when congressdid act on a variety of welfare and social programs, the statelegislatures and local governments were nearly bankrupt. Fur-ther, the people who were suffering were not only the "poor"but also people who had been the backbone of the communities.It has been airgued that as originally conceived public assis-tance was thought to be a program that would tide people overuntil the unemployment crisis passed.'^ By 1955 the welfaresubcommittee of a commission that was created to investigatepossible reductions of Federal programs concluded that the"national interest in welfare" extended to virtually all con-ceivable categories of the poor.^ The contemporary welfaresystem finds congress providing funds that, coupled with thestate general assistance programs, enable the states to havecontrol over a program for a large number of poor with an out-lay of available income not much higher than prior to 1935-1938.

III. STATE-LOCAL ACTION

The discretion exercised at the local level is aimed atintroducing local standards.6 One researcher suggests thatthe main interest is to control voluntary versus involuntarypoverty.^ There also are clear racial overtones to the controlover welfare. Discretionary activities in other programs alsohurt the poor. Community action programs have varied from com-munity to community—a variance strengthened with congressionaladoption of the so-called Green amendment.8 The patterns ofgovernmental services also indicate that the poor receive lowerquality, fewer or, at best, different services than do theirhigher-income neighbors.^ In part the actions at the locallevel reflect the operation of different politicalconstituencies.

IV. DIFFERENT DRUMMERS

There are at least two elements in the constituencies ofthe state and local legislatures and of the congress. They areadministrators and voters. Mention has already been made ofthe interest of the Federal bureaucracy in extending programsto the poor. Suffice it to say that they have promoted pro-grams aimed at the poor (the public dissension over cuttinglegal services to the poor is but one example).

While a literature does exist which portrays the state andlocal bureaucracies as less competent than their Federal breth-ren, recent advances at the state and local level may mean thatthis criticism is not as valid as it once was. Perhaps theimportant factor is the closeness of the state and local bu-reaucracies to the problems in their day-to-day work. Theappearance of welfare pickets and similar "real people" atFederal offices is a new and relatively infrequent occurrence.It is a common event for the local administrator. A presenta-tion of the probable impact on the local bureaucracy has beengiven by Michael Lipsky.^O The important element whxch LxpsKysuggests is that:

ift7

. . . it is difficult for street-level bureaucrats toacknowledge the impact of their behavior toward clientsbecause their very ability to function in bureaucraticroles depends upon routines, simplifications, and otherpsychological mechanisms to reduce stress.H

The tendency therefore is to view criticism as "ignorant orinaccurate." Another article which considers the impact ofthe bureaucracy on the poor marshalls evidence to show thatthe bureaucracy is middle-class oriented and virtually unableto respond to the poor.12

Apart from cin administrative constituency less sympatheticto the complaints of the poor, there is evidence of differentpublic constituencies operating at the national, state and lo-cal levels. Traditional community power literature draws adistinction between cosmopolitans and locals. A recent articlehas suggested the concept of salience maps to indicate the re-lative importance of the different levels.13 The correlationspresented in the article suggest that those people who are mostattuned to state affairs have attitudes (distrust of fellowmen, dislike of Federal activities, and opposition to integra-tion activities) that would make them likely to oppose aid forthe poor. Indeed the author's interviews with welfare boardmembers in Virginia indicated that the board members viewedtheir restrictive attitudes as what the local citizenry wanted.Where a board favored more expansive policies they indicated aneed to educate local citizens to the values of such policies.Only in some rural areas of Virginia where a large proportionof the population received some form of assistance was therean apparent spontaneous large amount of support for welfarepolicies as expansive as the meager local funds could finance.

The sympathy of the national constituency is perhaps bestrepresented by the leaders of interest groups and other elites.These people are more visible to congressmen and other nationalofficials and hence their support of programs to aid the poorand minorities tend to provide justification for congress toadopt more expeunsive programs. 14

It even may be possible that voters compartmentalize theirpictures of levels of government. The public's assignment ofperceived responsibilities to levels of government are dif-ferent. Part of the perceived responsibilities of the nationalgovernment include welfare and general social services whilelocal government is seen as mainly responsible for physicalservices.15 Given such a division a dissonance between na-tional level aspirations and local level services can beunderstood.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The alterations to the original description by Monypennyhave important implications for Federal grants particularly asthey pertain to poverty programs. First, the existing systempermits both the "nationals" and the "state-locals" to havetheir cake and eat it too, although each complains from timeto time. Second, unlike the conclusion suggested by Mony-penny, any special revenue-sharing programs designed to replaceor augment welfare and poverty-related programs would result inreduced programs. The state-local decision-makers would beunder pressure to use such funds for majority rather than

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minority programs. In such situations even if state-locallegislators were predisposed to provide programs for theminorities, they would find themselves unable to pass theblame to a higher level. Typical of such a feeling was thecomment by one city council member to a congressional com-mittee studying public housing in the 1950's that he did notwant the council to have the responsibility for locating pub-lic housing. If they had such power, the pressures to excludesuch housing in the individual wards would mean no publichousing. Thus, unlike the status quo situation suggested byMonypenny, there likely would be a significant change. Al-though not altogether settled, the reports of the demise ofthe model cities and economic opportunity programs withoutreplacement tend to confirm this hypothesis.

From the perspective of the poor, congress' acting asthe state legislature and city council is preferable to thestate legislature's and city council's having to make nationaldecisions. While i t is true, as Michael Harrington noted inThe Other America, that the poor are invisible, they becomevisible to the local public when welfare budgets and otherrelated programs are considered. They see the poor as a drainon the local treasury euid, often, as black. Either or both ofthese stereotypes result in an unfavorable reaction by thebetter-off majority. As Schattschneider has suggested per-haps the best hope for the minority poor is to appeal to awider arena where they are a larger number if not proportion,^"Removing congress from social program policy-making probablywill result in programs less favorable to the poor than is trueat the present time.

REFERENCES

pro and con arguments about revenue sharing, see: State Government,46 (Winter, 1973). Michael D. Reagan, The New Federalism (New York;Oxford University Press, 1972), especially pp. 108-111, 116-117, and122-125, The New Federalism; Poss ib i l i t i e s and Problems in RestructuringAmerican Government (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center forScholars, 1973),

^"Federal Funds and I l l i n o i s State Finance, 1958-1972," I l l i no i s Government,36 (Feb. 1973) 6 and 7.

^ End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969).

a general presentation of the withering-away fallacy see: Gilbert v.Steiner, Social Insecuri ty: The Pol i t ics of Welfare (Chicago: RandMcNally and Co., 1966), pp. 18-47.

^Federal Aid to Welfare, A Study Cotimittee Report (Washington, D.C.: Com-mission on Intergovernmental Relations, June, 1955) p. 6.

^See: Martha Derthick, " In terc i ty Differences in Administration of thePublic Assistance Program: The Case of Massachusetts," in James Q, Wilson,ed . . City Po l i t i c s and Public Policy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc . ,1968), pp. 243-266. Joseph Cepuran, Public Assistance and Child Welfare:The Virginia Pattern, 1664-1964 (Char lot tesvi l le : Ins t i tu te of Government,University of Virginia, 1968), Frances Fox Piven and Ri,chard A, ClowardRegulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: PantheonBooks, 1971), U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee onFiscal Policy, Studies in Public Welfare, Paper #5. Pt, 2, Issues in

Welfare Administration (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office,March 12, 1973)

^See Joel F. Handler "Federal-State Interests in Welfare Administra-tion" in Studies in Public Welfare, especially pp. 2 and 32.

8see J. David Greenstone and Paul E. Peterson, "Reformers, Machines, andthe War on Poverty," in City Politics and Public Policy, pp. 267-292; andOrganizing Communities for Action (Washington; Office of Economic Op-portunity, February, 1968).

^Herbert Jacob, "Contact with Governmental Agencies," Midwest Review ofPolitics, 16 (February, 1972), 132-134. Charles S. Benson and PeterLund, Neighborhood Distribution of Local Public Services (Berkeley:University of California, Institute of Governmental Affairs, 1969),pp. 94-96. Blanche D. Blank, Rita J. Immerman, and C. Peter Rydell, "AComparative Study of an Urban Bureaucracy," Urban Affairs Quarterly.4 (March, 1969), 348-350.

iO"street-Level Bureaucracy and the Analysis of Urhan Reform," UrbanAffairs Quarterly, 6 (June, 1971), 391-409.

lllbid., p. 406.

12Gideon Sjoberg, Richard A. Brymer, and Buford Farr i s , "Bureaucracy andthe Lower Class," Sociology and Social Research. 50 (1966), 325-337,reprinted in Elihu Katz and Brenda Danet, eds . . Bureaucracy and thePublic (New York: Basic Books, Inc . , 1973), pp. 61-72. For a morespecific reference to local level see Frances Fox Piven, "MilitantCivil Servants in New York City," TRANS-action 8 (November, 1969)pp. 24-28.

13M. Kent Jennings and Harmon Zeigler, "The Salience of American StateP o l i t i c s , " American Pol i t i ca l Science Review. 64 (June, 1970), 523-535.

literature in this area is large. One example is Norman Luttbegand Harmon Zeigler, "Attitude Consensus and Conflict in an InterestGroup," American Political Science Review (September, 1966), 655-665.

Everett F. Cataldo, "Orientations Toward State and Local Governmentin James A. Reidel (ed.). New Perspectives in State and Local Politics(Waltham, Mass: Xerox College Publishing, 1971), p. 115.

°Eo E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt,Rinehart and Winston, 1960), pp. 38-43.

POLITICS AND INFORMATION IN THREE ANTI-POVERTY PROGRAMSLeonard Rubin*

Washington, D.C.

I . POLITICS AND INFORMATION AS A SUBJECT

This essay i s concerned with p o l i t i c s and information aspar t of the larger p o l i t i c s of public policy.^ The object i sto draw at tent ion to the in terac t ion between the p o l i t i c a l

*This essay represents the views of the author only and not ofany agency although the author has worked with various federal agencies.

i o n