Politics, Policy, and Public Options

Ganesh Sitaraman is Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Law and Government at Vanderbilt Law School. He is the author or co-author of four books, including The Great Democracy and The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017. Anne Alstott is the Jacquin D. Bierman Professor at the Yale Law School. Professor Alstott is the author of a number of books, including A New Deal For Old Age (2016) and Taxation In Six Concepts (2015). Her articles on social welfare policy, including tax policy, have been widely published in leading law journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Columbia Law Review. She has written or co-written pieces for The New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Huffington Post and Slate and has appeared on NPR.

Introduction Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott; 1. More than meets the eye: government social provision and the politics of 'public options' Mallory SoRelle and Suzanne Mettler; 2. The entrepreneurial state: socializing risks and rewards Mariana Mazzucato and Henry Lishi Li; 3. Challenges in designing equitable public options Anne Alstott and Ganesh Sitaraman; 4. What about private options Jon D. Michaels; 5. The original – and still the best?: the health insurance public option and the politics of social reform Jacob S. Hacker; 6. The irony of health care's public option Allison K. Hoffman; 7. Promoting quality and equality through a public option in early childhood education and care Kimberly J. Morgan; 8. Revamping public energy Shelley Welton; 9. A public option in banking: postal banking Mehrsa Baradaran.