Party Strength, Party Change and Policy-Making in the American States

Abstract

This research tests the effects of changing party strength on the representativeness of policy-making in American state legislatures. Building upon research initially presented by Robert Erikson, Gerald Wright and John McIver, it shows that Democrat-dominated state legislatures produce public policies that are more liberal and more consistent with the ideological positions of their constituents when they are faced with increased Republican party success in winning elections. Democrats whose majorities are eroding respond by producing policies consistent with the demands of their core constituents, while those who do not face lessened strength are able to drift right in their policy-making. A similar result holds in the few cases in which Republicans dominate state legislatures: increased Democratic strength leads them to respond by enacting more conservative public policies. Where neither party dominates, results indicate that policy outputs are what would be expected by the well-developed median voter model: they approach the middle ground. Data for the analysis represent 46 American states and are centered on 1980, and models are estimated using ordinary least squares regression.