Altering State Policy: Interest Group Effectiveness Among State-Level Advocacy Groups‪.‬

Social welfare policy making at the state level has become more important in recent years. Devolution of important decisions from the national to the state level has occurred in many social programs (for example, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF]). State legislators, governors, and executive branch officials make more decisions regarding human services programs than at any time since perhaps the early 1960s. As Ezell (2001) wrote: Social work's reaction to this shift in program responsibility includes Influencing State Policy, an organization created to ensure that social workers and social work students understand the importance of state-level advocacy (Schneider, 2002). Another reaction was the editorial decision to include at least one article on state policy in every issue of the Social Policy Journal (Hoefer, 2002a). Manuscripts are being written and published in academic journals relating to state-level human services programs across a wide range of policy arenas.