Policy Entrepreneurs and Institutional Change: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century Child Labor Reform in Germany and the U.S

Why do states devote resources to protecting groups that seem politically, economically, and socially powerless? This dissertation explores this question through an analysis of the political origins and development of nineteenth-century child labor regulation and factory inspection in Germany and the United States. Through four case studies---set in 1820s-30s Prussia, 1830s-40s Massachusetts, 1870s Imperial Germany, and 1890s Illinois---I find that existing sociological theories of social policy development cannot explain the emergence of child labor laws and factory inspection in these states. These policies emerged not as a direct result of industrialization, working-class mobilizations, or institutional feedbacks, but as a consequence of middle-class policy entrepreneurs' dedicated reform advocacy. In each case, reformers interpreted "objective" social conditions as problems that could reasonably be addressed through child labor regulation, and recognized institutional feedbacks as opportunities for policy change. Explaining the emergence and content of child labor laws, as well as the inspection systems designed to enforce them, therefore requires understanding these actors' motivations and actions.;Relying on in-depth inductive analysis of archival materials and published primary sources, I explicate the culturally-embedded normative paradigms that informed policy entrepreneurs' interpretive understanding of the child labor problem and motivated their political action. Although policy entrepreneurs' normative paradigms varied, I find that in every case, reformers saw working children either as posing a hidden threat or as harboring latent potential relevant to the interests of the state. Their particular understanding of this threat or value shaped the content of the policy programs they pursued. Furthermore, I identify the alliance-building strategies---including the ideational strategies of borrowing, citation, framing, and piggybacking---through which they forged coalitions to overcome political barriers and successfully effect institutional change. On the basis of this analysis I develop a theoretical model of policy entrepreneurship which challenges existing theories of welfare policy development by bringing actors, their ideas, and their creative political action to the fore. I use the model to show that similar policy outcomes need not have the same social-structural causes, and that the link between social-structural conditions and institutional change depends on the mediating intervention of agents who exercise judgment, creativity, and choice.