Partisan Change and Shifting Expenditure Priorities in the American States, 1945-1978

Abstract

This article examines the impact of shifts in partisan control of the governorship and state legislatures on longitudinal patterns of expenditure priorities for 38 states from 1945 to 1978. I suggest that such partisan interventions should have an impact on patterns of spending priorities over time only under two circumstances: (1) when the political parties within governmental institutions differ systematically in policy-relevant ways, and (2) when the governmental institution undergoing partisan change has the institutional power relative to other policymaking bodies to translate spending priorities into outcomes. Using a multiple interrupted time series analysis of trends in spending priorities for education, highways, welfare, and health and hospitals, it is found that, in general, partisan interventions do have a nontrivial impact on patterns of spending priorities over time, both in terms of the level (intercept) and trend (slope) of the spending priorities time series. In sum, it would appear that there is more than modest support for the general partisan intervention model of change in spending priorities over time.