Jocelyn Crowley argues that child support policy is an example of innovation through entrepreneurial activity over time. Relying on secondary and original sources, she identifies four different sets of entrepreneurs—social workers, conservatives, women legislators/women's groups, and fathers' rights groups. Crowley claims that over the long term, policies continuously evolve and actors enter, exit, and reenter the political arena. Policy entrepreneurs are the central actors who create policy change. She defines policy entrepreneurs as people who are alert to new opportunities, persist in advocating their ideas, and employ rhetorical ingenuity to frame their ideas in novel ways (p. 8). Groups, as well as individuals, have these entrepreneurial characteristics. Changes in child support policy, in the author's view, can be explained by changes in the domination of the political arena of different entrepreneurial groups.

Policy change occurs, therefore, because new entrepreneurs (challenger entrepreneurs), displace the entrepreneurs who successfully influenced the policy process in the past (incumbent entrepreneurs). According to Crowley, the success of these entrepreneurial groups depends on the strategies these individuals and groups use to displace incumbent entrepreneurs. Building on literature in economics, she argues that two strategies are important. First, entrepreneurs must follow a risk-reducing strategy. She defines this strategy as spreading the risk of political involvement across as many activists as possible by organizing cooperatively, rather than rallying around a single individual (p. 14). Second, successful entrepreneurs must follow legitimate shakeout strategies, such as lobbying, media exposés, and redirection of rules and procedures, to reduce the power of incumbent entrepreneurs. Illegitimate shakeout strategies, such as the use of violence, harassment, illegal manipulation of the rules of the game, and intentional false portrayals of the opposition, will cause the entrepreneur to be unsuccessful. This occurs because the general public will disapprove of such tactics, causing the entrepreneur to lose political support (p. 18).

Crowley traces how our approach to providing for children in single-parent families has shifted from a reliance on charity groups and law enforcement to welfare reimbursement through administrative means, to tough administrative collection strategies for all families, and, currently, to helping noncustodial parents provide for their children. She argues that each of these transformations can be explained by the rise of challenger entrepreneurs that redefine the policy issue and create new policy solutions. Challenger entrepreneurs are successful because they pursue strategies of risk reduction and legitimate shakeout.

For scholars interested in the development of child-support enforcement policy over time, Crowley's analysis provides valuable insights about how different groups view the problem of child support enforcement and how these groups have changed the issue definition of child support. Her account provides an excellent summary of the ways in which the assumptions that policy actors make regarding noncustodial parents have changed over time and how the political activity of groups representing different professions, especially law enforcement and social work, shape policy responses and issue definitions relating to poverty.

That said, however, some flaws exist in Crowley's analysis that limit the usefulness of her book to those interested in the policymaking process in general, but not child support policy per se. First, her discussion of the different groups that are active in creating child support policy does not fit well with her theory that entrepreneurs drive policy change. It is unclear how the groups she discusses are entrepreneurs, rather than simply interest groups. Interest group theory and work on social movements would have been more helpful for understanding how child support has changed over time than a theory of policy entrepreneurs.

The author admits that broadening the definition of entrepreneurs to “include entire movements of like-minded individuals is not helpful because it makes the term so elastic that it is meaningless” (p. 8). However, her discussion of conservative entrepreneurs does just this. She never clearly specifies who is a “conservative entrepreneur” and who is not. Both Democrats and Republicans were part of this group. She offers very little evidence that policy actors, who made similar arguments, actually worked together.

Flaws exist in Crowley's argument that following a risk reduction and legitimate shakeout strategy explains successful entrepreneurship. First, the concept of legitimate shakeout strategy encompasses a large number of activities. Legitimate shakeout strategies include such far-ranging activities as using the gender gap (p. 129) and supporting automatic welfare programs to reduce political risks (p. 111). This concept encompasses so many activities that it provides little leverage for understanding policy change. The one case she discusses in which entrepreneurs used illegitimate shakeout strategies is male advocacy organizations in the mid-1980s. The illegitimate shakeout strategy these organizations used was making disparaging comments about women in congressional testimony (p. 179). Although the congressional testimony of male advocacy group members reflects an anti-women attitude, Crowley does not provide any evidence that it was these negative comments that turned public opinion and political elites against male advocacy groups. The lack of interest group resources in these groups is a plausible alternative explanation, which she does not address. Furthermore, it is unclear exactly how this rhetoric is anymore “illegitimate” than the rhetoric used by conservatives concerning deadbeat dads discussed in earlier chapters.

The argument that risk reduction strategies predict entrepreneurial success also does not give us much leverage in explaining policy change. Crowley argues that entrepreneurial groups were successful because they formed wide-ranging coalitions, rather than relying on the magnetism of one “star” personality. The only example given of a high-risk strategy is the efforts of the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty to lobby for an assured child benefit. Crowley attributes its failure to a lack of coalition building (p. 198). As she points out, however, other reforms advocated by the Institute were adopted, which weakens the argument that this entrepreneur group was ineffective due to a lack of coalition building.

Despite the weaknesses discussed above, The Politics of Child Support in America provides a very interesting and compelling discussion of how issue definition concerning the family has shifted over time and about the role that different groups have played in shifting that definition. It is well written and organized and is a good text for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses to illustrate how policy rhetoric used by groups helps to shift our conceptions of social problems.