ANGIE JO

Abstract:  Welfare states differ significantly in their design and generosity in normal times, but systematic differences in their response to collective crises remain understudied.  This paper examines a puzzling relationship between baseline social spending and discretionary fiscal response to COVID-19: countries empirically cluster by welfare regime (Esping-Andersen 1990), rather than welfare state size, government partisanship, or fiscal capacity.  In particular, Liberal states vastly overspent on the crisis, relative to their own baselines and other low spenders, while Social Democratic states underspent.  I theorize two supply-side mechanisms behind the outsized Liberal response.  First, Liberal governments inherit weak infrastructural power for aid transmission, which inflates volume through inefficiency.  Second, Liberal governments operate with a politics of discretion to deliver temporary relief policies that are designed to disappear.  These factors favour broad, temporary cash transfers over alternative policies, causing a short-term “spike” in fiscal spending in Liberal countries, whereas Social Democratic states “smooth” their spending across normal times and crisis times.  I use OLS regression, PCA, and case studies of the United States, Germany, and Denmark to illustrate how their everyday welfare states come to constrain and complement their menu of options in crisis.

Abstract:  What happens to billions of dollars in emergency social policy enacted during a crisis? This paper investigates whether discretionary federal aid fosters long-term institutional reform or merely provides temporary relief.  Focusing on the Hardest Hit Fund (HHF)—a $9.6 billion mortgage relief program launched after the 2008 Financial Crisis—I examine how state housing finance agencies (HFAs) used these funds: to pass through short-term liquidity, or to pursue deeper restructuring of mortgage debt.  Using archival program documents, interviews, and a two-part empirical strategy, I first analyze within-group variation among the 19 HHF states.  I then assess longer-term effects through a quasi-experimental comparison with non-recipient states during the 2021 rollout of the Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF).  Together, these methods trace whether early crisis-era discretion shaped policy ambition and administrative capacity over time.  The results highlight a broader pattern of expansion without capacity: while federal programs granted states formal authority, they often withheld the infrastructure or political support needed for structural reform.  Yet some HFAs adapted within this discretionary space—engaging in quiet administrative expansion that enabled more ambitious policies a decade later.  This study offers new insight into the political economy of debt relief and institutional change across periods of crisis and levels of government in a Liberal welfare state.

Abstract:  This paper introduces the concept of the crisis welfare state to describe a distinct mode of social policy expansion that emerges during rare but disruptive episodes of collective crisis.  These emergency policies—such as expanding the child tax credit and eviction and foreclosure moratoria—often reach broader populations than the everyday welfare state, temporarily extending protections to both chronically and newly vulnerable groups.  Yet they are structurally designed to expire, rolling off before underlying risks have abated and often failing to reach those most in need.  Drawing on detailed case studies of COVID-19-era housing and tax credit policy, we show how crisis welfare policies recognized new forms of vulnerability and generated substantial public resources—but also reproduced exclusion, exacerbated precarity through “crisis drift,” and left gaps increasingly filled by private credit.  Our framework expands the traditional welfare state literature, which has typically focused on long-term, institutionalized programs addressing individualized life-cycle risks.  By contrast, we center emergency, short-term interventions in response to collective shocks—events whose causes and consequences are widely shared but unevenly impacted.  In doing so, we join calls for a “bottom-up” approach to crisis politics that takes seriously the experience of those most dependent on the welfare state, and we highlight how temporary welfare expansions shape—not just reflect—patterns of institutional change, social inequality, and state capacity.

Abstract:  How do state-level social safety nets respond to collective crises, and do moments of emergency lessen, widen, or reproduce pre-existing inequalities in social protection across the U.S.?  This paper investigates the relationship between baseline generosity in state-level welfare states and crisis-era expansions during the 2008 Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.  We build on our theory of the “crisis welfare state,” which conceptualizes emergency policies as temporary yet expansive interventions that reach both chronically and newly vulnerable populations—but are structurally designed to sunset, often leading to abrupt roll-off and renewed precarity.  Using original data collection across all 50 states, we develop a panel of two dependent variables: (1) crisis expansion—the scale and scope of emergency welfare policies; and (2) crisis duration—the designated end of those temporary expansions, and their drift or institutionalization post-crisis.  We assess whether and how these measures correlate with states’ pre-crisis welfare generosity, political partisanship, and crisis severity. 

Abstract:   This study examines how Americans weigh competing principles—need versus personal responsibility—when evaluating government disaster aid.  Should public assistance prioritize under-resourced households lacking private protections, or those who have demonstrated preparedness through wealth, insurance, and mitigation efforts?  Using a randomized survey experiment, we present respondents with contrasting vignettes of disaster-affected households:  a high-income family that took extensive protective measures yet lost their home, and a low-income family unable to afford such protections.  Participants are asked to assess appropriate government support for each, across both short-term relief and long-term recovery policy.   Fielded across recent U.S. disaster contexts—including the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires and the October 2024 Hurricanes Helene and Milton—this study explores whether support for aid shifts based on disaster type, household demographics, or perceived severity.  Through these trade-offs, we test whether natural disasters constitute a normative “exception” to Americans’ broader preference for self-reliance—particularly when hardship is framed as unpredictable or disproportionately impacting marginalized communities.  The results shed light on public willingness to endorse redistribution in the face of shared risk, and on the boundaries of solidarity in American disaster governance.

Abstract:  This paper examines public attitudes toward government intervention during collective crises across three welfare regimes: the United States (Liberal), Germany (Christian Democratic), and Denmark (Social Democratic). Drawing on nationally representative surveys, it compares support for state action across five crisis scenarios—including pandemics, natural disasters, and economic collapse—as well as traditional welfare risks like unemployment or child care.  Respondents are asked whether governments should be allowed to exercise greater discretionary power and redistribute more wealth during collective crises than in normal times.  The purpose of combining these items and fielding them across three countries is twofold:  to assess within-country differences in public preferences for state intervention during collective crises versus traditional welfare risks, and to examine cross-national variation in how sharply these preferences diverge.  By combining interpretive and statistical methods, the project explores whether crises are perceived as “states of exception” that justify a temporary suspension of partisan constraints, and whether such shifts are shaped by the normative foundations of different welfare regimes.