{"id":11205,"date":"2021-03-16T13:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/?p=11205"},"modified":"2021-03-16T16:25:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T14:25:32","slug":"elites-and-politics-the-case-of-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/elites-and-politics-the-case-of-obamacare\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Policy Elites and Politics: The Case of Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Does the idea of all-powerful elites shaping public policy to align with their interests reflect reality? If so, how do they pull it off? If not, what is their actual influence, how do they operate, and what interests drive them? William Genieys<\/a>, a political scientist and sociologist at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, has a long-standing interest in these questions. After studying the French and Spanish elites, he more recently turned his attention to U.S. elites. In his latest book, Gouverner \u00e0 l\u2019abri des regards. La r\u00e9ussite de l\u2019Obamacare<\/i><\/a> [Governing out of sight. The Obamacare success] (Presses de Sciences Po, September 2020), he uncovers the role of U.S. policy elites\u2009\u2013\u2009and in particular of so-called long-term insiders\u2009\u2013\u2009in the emblematic reform of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, on healthcare. Interview.<\/p>\n

Along with your two previous studies on Catalan and Andalusian political elites in Spain and on French policy elites, this book forms a comparative trilogy about elites, politics and policy . What is the genesis of this work?<\/h5>\n

William Genieys: I began this research series with an analysis of the role of representative elites in Catalonia and Andalusia (ie Parliamentarians) in the transformation of the Spanish State. Then turned to examining how a group of state elites helped reinvent the Social Security model and transform National Defense policies in France. I approached the U.S. case by going back to the question I had explored regarding the role of state political elites in French public policymaking. But my take on elites evolved here. Writing a textbook on sociology and theory of elites helped me identify the \u2018pitfalls\u2019 and promising research paths. This led me to shift the analytical focus from political elites to those in the political entourage who shape the content of the programmatic orientations of public policies, and sometimes even the content of the decision.
\nFinally, my study of U.S. policy elites analysed the influence of long-term insiders [which I broadly define as individuals with long-held policymaking roles] <\/i>in the achievement of Obamacare(1)<\/sup><\/a>This research on the U.S. case would not have been possible without funding from French Agency for Research and its German counterpart – DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.<\/span><\/span>