Inter-Party Competition, Economic Variables, and Welfare Policies in the American States

Abstract

T HE OBJECT OF THIS PAPER is to discover the relationship among the extent of inter-party competition, the presence of certain economic factors, and the extent of nine public welfare policies, using the American states as the units for investigation. The fifty states share a common institutional framework and general cultural background, but they differ in certain aspects of economic and social structure, political activity, and public policy. Therefore, they provide a large number of political and social units in which some important variables can be held constant while others are varied. Our general concern is to investigate the relation between political processes and the policies adopted by political systems. In this study public policies, or more particularly, social welfare policies of the various state political systems, are the dependent variables. Public policy, its formulation, implementation and effects, is one of the major interests of students of politics. Political science is concerned with how various formal and informal institutions, economic, social, philosophical and geographic conditions influence the adoption and implementation of policy.' For theoretical purposes it seems useful to place the problem of the relationship be-