Fay Lomax Cook

Professor of Human Development & Social Policy and Political Science
Director and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Social Policy, University of Chicago, 1977
flc943@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-8704
Additional biographical information

Fay Lomax Cook is director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University and professor of human development and social policy in the School of Education and Social Policy with a courtesy appointment in the department of political science. Her research focuses on the interrelationships between public opinion and social policy, the politics of public policy, public deliberation, and the dynamics of public support for programs for older Americans, particularly Social Security.

She has been a visiting scholar at Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in 2004-05, president of the Gerontological Society of America in 2000; a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1997-98; and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in 1987-88. She has also been a member of the Expert Panel on Performance Outcome Measurement, U.S. Administration on Aging; a member of the Ford Foundation's research advisory committee on Social Welfare Policy and the American Future; a scientific consultant to the National Institute on Aging; and a member of the North American Program Committee for the International Congress on Gerontology. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Current Projects

Public Deliberation and Discursive Capital. Cook is writing a book entitled Talking Together: Discursive Participation and American Democracy with Lawrence Jacobs of the University of Minnesota and Michael Delli Carpini of the University of Pennsylvania. It is based on a survey the co-authors developed to describe the extent to which Americans come together to deliberate and discuss policy issues in both formal and informal settings and to explain the effects of these kinds of "discursive participation."

Public Knowledge, Attitudes, and Support for Energy Policy. Despite an abundance of rhetoric on energy policy from both political parties, critics maintain that the U.S. lacks a national energy strategy. Part of developing such a strategy lies in understanding public attitudes about different sources of energy, whether those opinions change as the public becomes more informed about energy alternatives, what types of energy policies the public is willing to support, and what the public is willing to do as far as making lifestyle choices to meet the long-term energy demands of our society. Along with IPR Faculty Fellow and political scientist Jamie Druckman and IPR graduate research fellow Toby Bolsen, Cook is working on a project to forward just this understanding by examining Americans’ changing knowledge and attitudes about traditional energy sources, alternative sources of energy, and lifestyle choices that affect energy production and consumption.

Information, Knowledge, and Confidence in Social Security. Political trust and confidence remain low by historic standards. Although existing research suggests that restoring the public's political trust and confidence requires improved government performance, the fundamental but unexamined question is whether the public's faith can be increased by expanding its information and knowledge about the activities that the government already performs. Using a large Gallup survey of attitudes toward Social Security, this study examines the impact on the public's knowledge and confidence of the personal Social Security statements mailed by the Social Security Administration to all persons who contribute to Social Security.

The Politics of Social Security in the 21st Century: From Consensus to Dissensus. This project examines the politics that surround the debate about contemporary social policy issues including the relationship between policy elites and the public. Focusing on Social Security, they describe and interpret recent history to illuminate the changing contexts in which it operates, the views of the public, the attitudes of policy elites, and the actions of those who are trying to change it and those who have tried to maintain the status quo. In addition, the project addresses the way in which policy elites, including the mass media, invoke public opinion and how well and how accurately policy elites utilize public opinion data in making claims about what the public thinks. Cook and her colleagues use records from mass media, presidential statements, congressional hearings, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research to examine and then test claims about Social Security. They find, for example, that many of the claims about the public's lack of confidence in Social Security rest on weak polling data that has been challenged by subsequent polls. The project suggests that if policy elites intentionally or inadvertently misreport and misrepresent what the public thinks, the type of public responsiveness on which American democracy is based suffers.

Polls, Public Opinion, and Public Policy. Cook co-edited a volume with sociologist Jeff Manza and political scientist Benjamin Page that looks at when and why public opinion influences policymaking. It considers these issues through investigations of historical trends in the opinion-policy link, the "use" of public opinion by political and economic elites, the role of public opinion in the making of foreign and domestic policy, and the rapidly changing nature of opinion polling and survey research and its implications for how public opinion is understood. The book, Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy, includes a "state of the debate" chapter by Cook and Manza as well as a chapter by Cook on how policymakers use and “invoke” public opinion.

Selected Publications

Books

Cook, F. L., with J. Manza and B. Page, eds. 2002. Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cook, F. L., with Edith J. Barrett. 1992. Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public. New York: Columbia University Press.

Journal Articles and Chapters

Cook, F. L., with L. Jacobs and M. Delli Carpini. Who deliberates? Discursive participation in America. Forthcoming in Can the People Decide? Theory and Empirical Research in Democratic Deliberation, ed. S. Rosenberg.

Cook, F. L. 2005. Navigating pension policy in the United States: From the politics of consensus to the politics of dissensus about Social Security. 2005. Tocqueville Review 26(2): 37-66.

Cook, F. L., with M. Delli Carpini and L. Jacobs. 2004. Public deliberation, discursive participation, and citizen engagement. In Annual Review of Political Science 7, ed. N. W. Polsby, 315-45. Palo Alto, Calif.: Annual Reviews.

Cook, F. L. 2005. The U.S. election and aging policy: The view from France. Public Policy and Aging Report 15(1): 17-20.

Cook, F. L., with J. Manza. 2002. A democratic polity? Three views of policy responsiveness to public opinion in the United States. American Politics Research 30(6): 630-67.

Cook, F. L., with J. Barabas and B. Page. 2002. Invoking public opinion: Policy elites and Social Security. Public Opinion Quarterly 66:235-64.

Cook, F. L., with L. Jacobs. 2002. Assessing assumptions about Americans' attitudes about Social Security: Popular claims meet hard data. In The Future of Social Insurance, ed. P. Edelman and D. L. Salisbury, 82-110. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Cook, F. L., with J. Barabas and B. Page. 2002. Policy elites invoke public opinion: Polls, policy debates and the future of social security In Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy, ed. F.L. Cook, J. Manza, and B. Page, 141-70. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cook, F. L. 2002. Intergenerational equity. In Encyclopedia of Aging, ed. D. J. Ekerdt, R. A. Applebaum, K. C. Holden, S. G. Post, K. Rockwood, R. Schulta, R. L. Sprott, and P. Uhlenberg, 533-36. New York: Springer Publishing Co.

Cook, F. L. 2002. Living longer, living better: The challenge to policymakers. In Living Longer, Living Better, Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Cook, F. L., with M. Silverstein; T. M. Parrott, and J. J. Angelelli. 2000. Solidarity and tension between age-groups in the United States: Challenge for an aging American in the 21st century. International Journal of Social Welfare 9:270-84.