Policy Elite Composition and Divergent Policy Outcomes Under the Same Government: Liberal Welfare Reforms in England

Applying for the panel on: Social Identities, Programmatic Action, and Group Dynamics in Policy Processes Chairs: Nils C. Bandelow (TU Braunschweig) & Johanna Hornung (Université de Lausanne) Public policy and elite scholars have increasingly examined the types of actors engaged in advocacy coalitions and the biographies of policy elites to account for policy outcomes. Yet, the relationship between heterogeneity and breadth of elite coalitions and policy design outcomes remains underexplored. This study asks how differences in the composition of policy elites can account for divergent policy outcomes under the same governmental reform agenda. The paper analyzes two landmark Liberal welfare reforms under the Lloyd George government in early 20th-century England: The Old Age Pensions Act (1908), the first tax-financed, non-contributory pension reflecting a universalistic policy logic, and the National Insurance Act (1911), which institutionalized a contributory insurance principle. While overlapping sets of actors were involved in both reforms, the policy processes differed markedly in the heterogeneity of policy elites involved, the breadth of coalitions supporting and opposing the reforms, and the duration of deliberation. Drawing on the Programmatic Action Framework and insights from the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the study analyzes how differences in the social positioning, career backgrounds, and belief systems of policy elites shaped coalition dynamics and programmatic coherence, resulting in contrasting policy principles. The comparative study makes use of extensive biographical data (Who’s Who and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) and historical secondary sources on the positioning of policy elites in relation to the two acts. The findings show that the National Insurance Act (1911) emerged from a relatively closed, top-down process, dominated by a smaller and socially homogeneous group of bureaucrats, politicians, and organized interests. In contrast, the Old Age Pensions Act (1908) was shaped through a broader and more heterogeneous coalition of policy elites, whose prolonged and pluralistic debate contributed to a universalistic policy design. The paper advances group-centered explanations of policymaking and highlights the value of analyzing policy elite heterogeneity to understand policy change.