Noble, Charles 1948-

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Noble, Charles 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born 1948. Education: Cornell University, B.A.; University of California, Los Angeles, M.A.; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Political Science, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840-4605. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

California State University, Long Beach, professor of political science, department chair, and director of international studies program.

WRITINGS:

Liberalism at Work: The Rise and Fall of OSHA, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1986.

Welfare as We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

The Collapse of Liberalism: Why America Needs a New Left, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2004.

Contributor to books, including The Political Economy of Public Policy, edited by Alan Stone and Edward J. Harpham, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1982; Corporate Crime and the State, edited by Frank Pearce and Laureen Snider, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1995; and Confronting the New Conservatism: The Rise of the New Right in America, edited by Michael J. Thompson, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2007. Contributor to periodicals, including Logos, Technology Review, Policy Studies Journal, Comparative Politics, and Research in Political Economy.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles Noble, a professor of political science, is the author of Welfare as We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State. In the work, "Noble provides a broad historical and institutional review of American social policy in the twentieth century," observed American Political Science Review contributor Gretchen Ritter. "He argues that the weaknesses and peculiarities of the American welfare state are rooted in fundamental features of the American political system." According to David Dodenhoff, writing in the Political Science Quarterly, the author "considers three influences on the size and shape of America's welfare state—the balance of power between business and labor (favoring business), the organization of American political institutions (decentralized, fragmented, dominated by two political parties), and the nature and extent of racial and ethnic cleavages in America (deep and often hostile)." "Throughout the twentieth century," noted Labor Studies Journal reviewer Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, "these structural obstacles encouraged compromise, resulting in an attenuated welfare system, which in the late twentieth century has become very difficult to defend." Welfare as We Knew It received generally strong reviews. As Ritter stated, "The strength of this book lies in its often astute political analysis of the circumstances under which social policy proposals succeeded and failed. Furthermore, Noble's particular attention to the role played by racial politics and competitive federalism in limiting welfare expansion seems especially insightful. More generally, this book provides a useful synthesis of the work of many other scholars who have studied the American welfare state in historical perspective."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, September, 1998, Gretchen Ritter, review of Welfare as We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State, p. 710.

Historian, spring, 1999, Daniel Levine, review of Welfare as We Knew It, p. 678.

Journal of the American Planning Association, spring, 2000, William W. Goldsmith, review of Welfare as We Knew It, p. 207.

Labor Studies Journal, winter, 1999, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, review of Welfare as We Knew It, p. 96.

Political Science Quarterly, spring, 1998, David Dodenhoff, review of Welfare as We Knew It, p. 153.

Publishers Weekly, April 12, 2004, review of Welfare as We Knew It, p. 46.