Policy Feedback in a Racialized Polity

American public policy is and has always been profoundly racialized. Yet, the literature on policy feedback lacks cohesive theorization of how race matters for feedback processes. This article offers a conceptual road map for studying policy feedback in the context of racialized politics. Drawing together the substantial (but largely disconnected) work that already exists in the fields of public policy and racial politics, I develop the racialized feedback framework to provide theoretical guidance on (i) when race should be a core focus of policy feedback research and (ii) how race structures the relationship between policy and polity. I argue that both the scope of the questions that scholars ask and the nature of the answers they find are altered when race is afforded an appropriately central role in research on policy feedback.
美国的公共政策一直带有强烈的种族色彩。然而，关于种族如何影响政策反馈过程的文献仍缺乏系统性的理论整合。本文提出了一种概念性分析方法，以用于研究在种族化政治背景下的政策反馈。结合公共政策和种族政治领域内已经存在的大量研究，本文提出了种族化反馈框架（RFF），并为以下问题提供了理论指导：1）种族何时应成为政策反馈研究的核心焦点；2）种族如何构建政策与政体之间的关系。本文认为，当种族在政策反馈研究中发挥适当的核心作用时，研究学者所提出的问题的范围以及他们所发现的答案的性质都会发生变化。