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Report
The Mainline Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Social Capitalism
…free institutions.”[1] Over a century and a half later, reviewing the state of American community life, Robert Putnam affirmed Tocqueville’s observation. In his magisterial Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival…
Blog Post
Social Capital: What Is It?
…assess trends in the various components of social capital (or to consider their distribution across Americans at a point in time). Since Robert Putnam first popularized the concept of social…
Event
Religion’s Refusal to Die
…the inseparability of religion and politics in premodern Greek and Islamic traditions. The conference concluded on the evening of April 21 with a discussion between AEI’s Robert P. George and…
Blog Post
Introduction to The Social Breakdown
…Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Nisbet, Michael Novak, William Schambra, and Robert Woodson, the project produced the landmark brief To Empower People: From State to Civil Society, which highlighted the importance of…
Blog Post
Work Requirements Unify Voters in Wisconsin’s Referendum
When Wisconsin’s voters went to the polls on Tuesday, April 4, most national news coverage focused on the state’s supreme court election. But there was something else on the ballot…
Article
The Lost World of Ecumenical Republicanism
…1968 campaign, Price had joined John Doar (father of Robert Doar, president of AEI, where I’m employed), working for the bi-partisan economic development effort of Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy and Republican Senator…
Report
Unlocking the Future
…leverage the value-based payment systems that have been at the center of recent health care reform to create financial incentives for attaining quality indicators and outcomes. Read Bailey’s Chapter Pondiscio/Schurz | “The…
Op-Ed
Less Activation in US Social Assistance Programs?
…substitute) supported overturning the welfare status quo and creating a newsystem of work requirements under either the Deal substitute or the Republican-sponsored bill. The Senate, led by Republican Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas, spent the next six months crafting its alterative. Key issues includedfederal funding for states, the required level of state funding (called “maintenance of effort” or MOE) for the new TANF program, additionalfunding for childcare, and the nature of restrictions on benefits for unwed teens and the family cap. The Senate ultimately rejected what some (including some governors) derided as “conservative strings” on the block grant (such as ending benefits for teen parents and requiring the family…
Op-Ed
Dynamism as a Public Philosophy
…an extraordinary degree, political life in the United States over the past half-century has played out along the fault lines set by philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick in their…
Op-Ed
The Bad Science Behind the Child Tax Credit Expansion
Here is a story that helps explain why people have lost trust in public-policy experts: As someone who spent almost 20 years managing social-service programs in New York City, I…
Multimedia
Post-Pandemic, Remember Previous Progress on Poverty
Many American families faced serious economic hardship due to the pandemic and all of the shutdowns it triggered, but thanks to government aid, they got through it, and life is…
Blog Post
You’re Right, Senator Manchin: There Are No Work Requirements in Biden’s New Safety Net
…important lesson: Struggling families need both work and support to rise out of poverty. Robert Doar is the president of the American Enterprise Institute where he is also the Morgridge Scholar….