Pressure Cooker Politics: Partisanship and Symbolism in State Certification of Federal Stimulus Funds

Abstract

AbstractTo access funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, state governors had to formally certify their intent to do so within 45 days of the law's enactment. All governors eventually certified, but with considerable variation in celerity. This study employs event history techniques to model the probability of certifying the ARRA. It argues that the statute's design combined with economic distress within the states rendered manifest rejection of the law politically infeasible but, for state officials with certain partisan commitments, left open the possibility of symbolic resistance or support in the form of time to certification. State leaders relied on party identification to guide their decisions, resulting in markedly different propensities toward certification for Republican and Democratic governors. Results lend credence to this thesis: States with Republican governors were nearly 60% less likely to certify the ARRA on a given day than states with Democratic governors. This finding suggests that when economic constraints and policy design foreclose actual rejection of a federal law, state policymakers may rely on party labels to register their approbation or disapprobation through other means, including the amount of time taken to accept federal funding.