Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Eric Patashnik

Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age—with an Update on Backlash Politics During the Biden and Early Trump 2.0 Administrations

Eric Patashnik, Brown University

Abstract: The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive political coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize opposition forces, diminishing the power of their supporters and reducing the likelihood of the policies' subsequent entrenchment and expansion. Although backlash is not a new phenomenon, today’s political landscape is distinguished by the frequency and pervasiveness of backlash in nearly every area of US policy-making. In this workshop, Eric Patashnik will present the findings of his recent book Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age. The book offers a policy-centered theory of backlash that illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging social identities and existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. Drawing on a database of more than 2000 New York Times articles about backlash episodes in the US between 1960 and 2019, as well as detailed case studies of issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Patashnik shows that backlash politics is fueled by partisan polarization, reactions to cultural and demographic shifts, and negative policy feedback from government activity itself. The workshop will provide an update on backlash politics during the Biden and early Trump 2.0 Administrations. 

Eric Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Political Science and Director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Public Policy in the Watson School of International and Public Affairs. Patashnik is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the University of Virginia, UCLA, and Yale University. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books, including Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017), Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Putting Trust in the US Budget: Federal Trust Funds and the Politics of Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 2000). 
Patashnik has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019, president of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in spring 2025. 
Patashnik received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996.