One of the chief contributions of Pamela Winston's book is that it strikes off in a new direction. She compares the political process at the national and state levels and, in particular, the extent to which poor families in the 1990s were represented in legislative debates over welfare reform. By giving states more responsibility, have we made it harder for the poor to influence the direction of policies that have a significant impact on their lives? This is an important and underresearched question. As the author recognizes, James Madison, V. O. Key, E. E. Schattschneider, Grant McConnell, and others have raised serious doubts about the ability of smaller jurisdictions to care for the disadvantaged. Empirical research on this question, however, has lagged somewhat behind the theorizing. Few studies have welldeveloped comparisons between different levels of government.

The heart of the book consists of two parts. Part I summarizes welfare policymaking at the national level, with particular attention to developments in the 1990s. Readers familiar with Kent Weaver's (2000) Ending Welfare As We Know It will find little new in this section of the book. Its chief virtue lies in summarizing concisely the key legislative milestones and in identifying the key interest groups and elected officials. It also helps to establish a baseline for comparison.

The real contribution of the book lies in Part II, in which the author offers case studies of welfare policymaking in Maryland, Texas, and North Dakota. These states were chosen to maximize variation in size, demographics, fiscal capacity, benefit levels, political culture, party control, institutional capacity, and media coverage of the issue. The selection of case studies is both a strength and a weakness of the book. On the positive side, the states chosen are not simply those with large welfare populations (e.g., California, New York), or those that have already been examined in depth (e.g., Wisconsin). Winston is thus able to illustrate a wide range of outcomes and add to most readers’ factual knowledge. Unfortunately, the three states differ on so many dimensions that the author's explanations for any particular policy choice tend to be overdetermined. Maryland's relative generosity, for example, is attributed to an active interestgroup community, considerable expertise among legislators and bureaucrats, Democratic party strength, political power of African Americans, and general affluence. With good reason the author uses verbs like “explore” and “examine” more than “explain.”

In each case study, the author tries to assess the presence of interest groups in policy debates. The main method is to identify all welfare-related legislative hearings between 1995 and 1997, note which groups testified and how often, place each group into one of about nine categories, and then add the number of appearances for each category. Little attempt is made to track interest-group lobbying of individual legislators and the governor, or efforts to use the media to sway public opinion. One of the main findings was that the number and range of voices was greater at the national level than in the states. The lack of representation of Indian tribes in North Dakota and of poor people generally in Texas was particularly notable. On the other hand, it also appears that groups advocating on behalf of the poor comprised a larger share of all groups testifying and of all testimony in Maryland and Texas than in Washington, DC (see Table 7–3), a trend that runs counter to expectations and is not addressed in the book.

The more difficult question is, so what? Can we make a strong connection between who spoke at legislative hearings and what policies states adopted? The less punitive policies in Maryland might have reflected the greater involvement by interest groups—or a half-dozen other factors mentioned in the book. Making a strong case that Interest Group A influenced Policy X is hard work, and past studies of this problem are conspicuously absent from the book. The author relies fairly heavily on local media accounts and interviews with participants to establish influence, yet most of those interviewed are not named and their credibility is hard to establish.

One might also question whether interest groups are the best way to gauge how well the poor are represented in policy debates. Considering how much has been written about the influence of individual politicians on U.S. social policy, motivated to make good policy or to establish their place in the history books, I would like to have seen greater attention to governors and key legislators in each state. These officials are accountable to the poor in ways that most interest groups are not, since the vast majority of these groups lack local roots or a large membership of poor families.

Nevertheless, I have a strong preference for studies that ask the right questions but fall short in delivering a compelling answer over studies that prove conclusively some trivial matter. Welfare Policymaking in the States clearly belongs in the first category. It is well written and informative, and raises a number of interesting empirical and normative issues. It should stimulate a considerable amount of future research into the politics of welfare reform.