Control Of State Government Research Articles

State government control and partisan happiness

Does politics impact happiness? This paper evaluates how being a political “winner” or “loser” – whether one’s preferred party controls government or not – is linked to multiple measures of life satisfaction. Using Gallup survey data on self-reported well-being for Democrats and for Republicans within the U.S. states for 2008–2016 (a time period when party control of government changed in several states) and a difference-in-difference model with two-way fixed effects, I find consistent evidence that citizens report lower levels of well-being when the opposing party controls state government. The substantive effect is particularly large for Democrats living in Republican controlled states. Conversely, there is little evidence that citizens’ well-being is boosted when their own party controls state government. These findings have important implications for our understanding about how partisan competition and election outcomes can impact subjective well-being and further highlight the significance of negative partisanship for American public opinion.

Political Party and Policy Choices: Explaining State Variation in SNAP Participation

ABSTRACT Although the majority of studies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) examine determinants of caseload size, we identify drivers of variation in SNAP participation rates between states, with a special focus on state-level political dynamics and policy implementation choices made by states. Using a panel regression analysis of state-specific administrative policies, as well as political and demographic variables spanning a 20-year period, we find that the party in control of state government has a large impact on SNAP participation rates, and political control often interacts with and counteracts the effect of SNAP policies on enrolling eligible low-income residents.

Shaping Electoral Outcomes: Intra- and Anti-systemic Violence in Indian Assembly Elections

AbstractElectoral violence is perpetrated by anti-systemic actors opposed to the democratic system, as well as by those vying for power through the electoral process. Even though the motivations for violent tactics are distinct, we do not know whether intra- and anti-systemic violence differ in their effects. Focusing on state-level elections in India – a country that combines nationwide elections with persistent political violence – we demonstrate that the distinction is crucial for understanding spatial patterns of electoral violence and effects on election outcomes. Based on an original dataset of violence in legislative assembly elections between 1985 and 2008, we show that both tactics depress turnout overall but that the effect is larger for anti-systemic violence. Intra-systemic violence not only appears to be more selectively targeted, as it is more likely to occur in constituencies where the incumbent belongs to the state-level opposition, but also generates electoral benefits for the party in control of state government.

Democratic Party Control Reduces Gender Inequality

Women earn less than men who work in the same job with the same level of experience. We know much about this gender wage gap but relatively little about its political or partisan sources. In this article, we examine the effects of party control of state government on gender inequality in income, wages, unemployment, and poverty. Employing both a regression discontinuity design and a dynamic difference-in-difference analysis, we find that electing a Democratic majority to the state house leads to substantial improvement in women’s incomes, wages, and unemployment relative to men – especially in recent years. We also show that greater female representation in office and more liberal policy-making on policies related to women’s rights could be driving that process. We find, however, fewer clear effects on poverty and less robust results for partisan control of the governor’s office or the state senate. Parties and politics matter, but not always.

Factors motivating the timing of COVID-19 shelter in place orders by U.S. governors

This article is an effort to isolate and estimate the impact of political party control of state government on the length of time it took U.S. states to issue shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs) in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. We adopt a two-step process to isolate the effect of politics. First, we measure the number of days between the date that state-level cases first exceeded one case per 100,000 population and state issuance of a SIPO. This permits us to compare governor’s choices in similar contexts – when the disease is known to be present in the community. Second, we use a statistical tool – survival analysis – to differentiate between state characteristics that might be associated with higher risks of uncontrolled spread and the impact of political party control. We find that the timing of disease progression was remarkably similar across states, suggesting that many states reached the 1:100,000 benchmark at about the same time. By contrast, we find that, even after controlling for a variety of factors, a Republican governor coupled with a Republican majority in the state senate predicts delays in the implementation of SIPOs – delays on the order of two days for Republican states that did act, but no action by more than one-third of those states after more than two months above 1:100,000. In contrast, potentially important decision-making factors such as urbanization, elderly population, hospital beds, extent of chronic diseases, and budget capacity of the state government serve, at best, as poor predictors of SIPO timing.

Partisanship, White Racial Resentment, and State Support for Higher Education

ABSTRACT Dominant explanations of state higher education policy tend to emphasize economic models that foreground the business cycle or political approaches that cast ideology as fairly fixed. We instead foreground changing social context to conceptualize state appropriations as predicted not only by these classic explanations, but also by the interplay of racial representation and political party control. Drawing on the racial backlash hypothesis and quantitative analyses, we show that party control of state government and racial representation in higher education jointly explain state appropriations. Unified Republican governments spent more than Democratic or divided governments when White students were overrepresented. Republicans spent less otherwise. These results suggest that partisan attitudes toward racial representation in higher education may shape state government support for colleges and universities.

“Living long in India”– India’s progress towards Universal Health Coverage

Abstract Issue There are multiple small health insurance schemes throughout India. However, high out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures, unaffordable and inequitable access to healthcare services still persist. In an attempt to address these issues and achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), India launched the healthcare scheme ‘Ayushman Bharat’ (“long live India”) in 2018. Description The Ayushman Bharat (AB) scheme has two components which include 1) transforming the existing primary healthcare centers (PHC) under the control of State Governments and 2) the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) also known as “ModiCare” - a health insurance. The scheme aims to transform nearly 150.000 PHCs to deliver comprehensive primary healthcare services across the country by 2022. NHPS covers the costs of almost all secondary and many tertiary care procedures of about 40% of the total Indian population. The coverage will be approximately €6.400 per year per beneficiary family; 60% of the costs are borne by the Centre and 40% by the States. Results Approximately €127 million have already been allocated by the Centre towards the AB scheme for the fiscal year 2018-19. Till date, around 29 million health insurance cards have been issued, approximately 1,8 million beneficiaries have been admitted and around 15.291 hospitals have been empaneled under NHPS. However, there is no data available validating the usage of the health services yet. Few Indian states are yet to implement the AB scheme. Lessons For the first time, attempts have been made to provide affordable healthcare services to the Indian population under a single common initiative. However, the AB scheme fails to cover outpatient health services, which are an important part of OOP expenses in India. Main message The effort to launch Ayushman Bharat in a big, democratic and diverse country like India has to be lauded, which not only aims to make healthcare services affordable but also aligns itself to the concept of UHC.

The Ethics of Insurgency

In the latter half of the twentieth century, lasting memories of two world wars and astonishment over the power of nuclear weapons left both policymakers and scholars of war largely preoccupied with the possibility of a catastrophic World War III. Instead, however, the face of war since 1945 has been that of regionally limited small wars and insurgencies fought with conventional weapons. Many of these conflicts began as armed rebellions against colonial regimes, but often later evolved into armed conflicts between and among various subgroups seeking control of state government. Such conflicts have usually been asymmetrical, with the party holding the reins of state power using aircraft, artillery, and armored vehicles, while those fighting against the regime have been limited to weapons that individuals can carry, such as automatic rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and improvised weapons of various sorts. The asymmetries have also typically gone deeper, with the fighters on the former side wearing uniforms and those on the latter often not; those on the former side making use of fortified bases and those on the latter side protecting themselves by blending in with the civilian population. Further, there have frequently been asymmetries in how each side has fought, with the militarily weaker side relying on stealth tactics, deception, and attacks against nonmilitary targets of more general public value, including direct attacks on people protected as noncombatants under the laws of war. The particular range of tactics classified as terrorism begins at this point, with the specific, direct, and intentional targeting of noncombatants. Such attacks not only have been the means of choice for transnational nonstate actors, including al-Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State, but have also been used to considerable effect in local civil wars.

Public Confidence in the Redistricting Process

This study examines the determinants of public confidence in the honesty and integrity of state redistricting processes by analyzing responses to the 2011 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies. Individual opinions about the redistricting process are matched to several state characteristics, including the presence of independent redistricting commissions, state legislative polarization, and legislative professionalism. Contrary to popular wisdom, the analysis reveals that neither partisan redistricting procedures nor political polarization reduce confidence in the redistricting process. Rather, public attitudes are determined more so by distaste for legislative professionalism and affinity for the party in control of state government.

The determinants of domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: Economic grievance, societal change and political resentment

This study tests three categories of motivations for domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: economic grievances, particularly those produced by economic restructuring; societal changes that challenge notions of white male privilege; and political and public policy elements that stoke resentments. Executing a series of negative binomial regression estimations on state-level data in the USA for the period 1970–2011, I find that measures of societal factors—specifically increase in abortion rates and growing female participation in the labor force—and political indicators such as Democratic Party control of the White House, precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks. Factors associated with economic hardships—such as poverty, the decline of manufacturing employment and the “Farm Crisis”—as well as growth of the non-white population, control of state government by the Democratic Party and growth of average Federal Income Tax rates—are not found to be significant predictors of right-wing terrorism.

Resisting the Fall: The Single Dominant Party, Policies and Elections in Malaysia

ABSTRACTBefore Malaysia’s 2013 general election, one of the few remaining dominant coalitions in the world was aware it would struggle to retain power. A fledgling opposition coalition had inspired public confidence of its capacity to competently rule while public discontent with the ruling party was rife due to the ubiquity of patronage that had prevented the responsible implementation of policies. However, regime change did not occur. How does the protracted rule of Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional coalition, and the hegemonic party in it, the United Malays National Organisation, relate to debates over authoritarian durability, during a period when dominant parties struggle to sustain power? Malaysian elections have been free enough that the opposition has been able to obtain and retain control of state governments, so why has Barisan Nasional not lost power? This article reviews the 2013 election examining three issues: the significance of coalition politics; how policies have shaped voting trends; and the growing monetisation of politics. These perspectives provide insights into the institutional structure of coalitions and their conduct of politics, including clientelistic practices, forms of mobilisation and governance and the outcomes of policies introduced to address socio-economic inequities and drive economic growth.

Interest Group Conflict Over Medicaid Expansion: The Surprising Impact of Public Advocates

We examined the potential economic, policy, and political influences on the decisions of the 50 US states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. We related a measure of relative state progress toward Medicaid expansion updated to 2015 to each state's economic circumstances, established policy frameworks in states, partisan control of state government, and lobbyists for businesses, medical professionals, unions, and public interest organizations. The 9201 lobbyists working on health care reform in state capitols exerted a strong and significant impact on Medicaid expansion. Controlling for confounding factors (including partisanship and existing policy frameworks), we found that business and professional lobbyists exerted a negative effect on state Medicaid expansion and, unexpectedly, that public interest advocates exerted a positive effect. There are 3.1 million adults who lack coverage because they live in the 20 states that refused to expand Medicaid. Although political party and lobbyists for private interests present significant barriers in these states, legislative lobbying on behalf of the uninsured appears likely to be effective.

How Michigan Became a Right to Work State

The passage of Right to Work (RTW) legislation in Michigan was a surprise to many, given its relatively high unionization rate. Previous studies that examine state RTW status and the process of passing RTW legislation are not a good fit for the events in Michigan. Instead, single-party Republican control of state government and a wealthy donor who prioritized RTW combined to introduce legislation, pass it, and sign it into law in a one-week period. Contextual factors helped create an opportunity for this campaign to succeed. The Michigan experience raises questions about long-term strategies for labor in similar environments in the era of big-money donors.

State Abortion Politics and TRAP Abortion Laws

How responsive are political lawmakers to an abortion issue that is potentially less salient to the public or in the media? Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (or TRAP) laws impose physical plant and personnel regulations and requirements on abortion providers that exceed those imposed on other comparable health care providers or outpatient medical facilities. Using event history analysis, this article examines the determinants of the enactment by states of a TRAP law over the period 1974 to 2008. The empirical results find that the polarized ideological positions of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on the issue of abortion, in conjunction with institutional control of state government, has a statistically significant impact on the enactment of a TRAP law in the expected direction.

Animal breeding in India - a time for reflection, and action

Animal breeding in India - a time for reflection, and action

The impact of tax rates, political partisanship and economic variables on the distribution of state and local tax burdens

This study finds that the effective state and local tax rate for the top 1% of income households as a percentage of the effective state and local tax rate for the bottom 20% of income households in 2002 is significantly influenced by whether a state has a multi-rate income tax, right-to-work laws, the liberalism of a state's electorate, the average tax burden in a state and past tax policy. Democratic Party strength in state government, Republican or Democratic Party institutional control of state government, change in real per capita income, a Democratic Governor and the change in the share of income going to the top 1% of income households are not significant predictors. The empirical results are identical for the top 2–5% of income households to the bottom 20% of income households.

State Responses to National Demnocratic Party Reform

This research examines the proliferation of Democratic state presidential preference primaries from 1972-80, an unintended consequence of McGovern-Fraser reforms to delegate selection adopted following the acrimonious 1968 Democratic National Convention. Unlike previous work, which has addressed the primary proliferation qualitatively and in a way that does not permit sorting out the various elements that may underlie the adoption of party reforms in the 1970s, we operationalize and test hypotheses about the influence of several factors -Democratic National Committee directives, party strength and type, partisan control of state government, home-state candidates, and divisive caucuses -on states moving from a caucus/convention arrangement of selecting delegates to a presidential preference primary. Our findings suggest that both national party efforts to involve more rank and file in the process and state characteristics predisposed some states to move in the direction of a preference primary rather than continuing with a party caucus/convention. Democratic control of state government, the presence of home-state candidates, and noncompliance with DNC directives were the most powerful forces behind states adopting Democratic presidential preference primaries.

Lower-Class Mobilization and Policy Linkage in the U.S. States: A Correction

Hill, Leighley, and Hinton-Andersson (1995) report a series of empirical analyses intended to test four hypotheses about the association between lower-class mobilization and public policies in the American states. Those hypotheses are: (1) the higher the turnout of the lower class, the more liberal is state welfare policy; (2) the higher economic and fiscal stress, the lower the association between lower-class turnout and welfare policy; (3) liberal party control of state government is the linkage mechanism that relates lower-class mobilization to policy; and (4) party competition is the linkage mechanism that relates lower-class mobilization to policy. In this note we explain how the incorrect handling of missing data in those original analyses led to an erroneous conclusion about the third hypothesis test, an incorrect sign reported for one control variable in the first two hypothesis tests, and small changes in the significance of a few other control variables. We explain the cause of the errors, report corrected analyses, and close with brief observations about the theoretical and practical implications of the correct empirical results. The error in the original analyses arose because missing data codes for three variables in a cross-sectional data set originally created in SPSSX were interpreted as valid values when the data set was expanded into a pooled, cross-sectional time-series design and analyzed with the MICROCRUNCH software package. Those three variables were for state party competition, mass political liberalism, and state party elite liberalism, and the missing data affect four states. Thus the missing data values biased the coefficients reported for these variables in the original analyses. The optimal procedures for handling such missing data problems are unsettled (Bartels and Brady 1991, 136-7). For the purposes of this note we report analyses that are conservative by some, but not all, criteriaanalysis of only those cases with complete data on the variables under study. This procedure appears especially appropriate in light of the absence of a consensus on an alternative one and the small percentage of total cases eliminated from consideration by the procedure in the present instance.

Family leave legislation in the American states: Toward a model of state policy adoption

The issue of mandated family leave has drawn substantial attention in recent years. This article develops and tests empirically a model of adoption of family leave policies in the American states during the late 1980s. State family leave policies are seen as a function of three sets of variables: (a) institutional-elite variables such as partisan control of state government and the proportion of women in the state legislatures; (b) constituency disposition variables such as mass partisanship, mass ideology, and the likelihood of general support for “women's” issues; and (c) contextual-demand variables such as birth rates and women's participation in the workforce. The model provides impressive fit to the data, accurately predicting the family leave policies of 92% of the state cases. The results suggest the importance of partisan control of state government, proportion of women in the state legislature, urbanization, and feminism as a state policy as factors that affect the probability that states will adopt mandated family leave policies.

Management of Political Influence

This article develops an analytical model of partisan redistricting (gerrymandering) in which control of state government is used to promote party and incumbent goals. The model suggests that elected officials confront a tradeoff between margins of victory for their party's House candidates and the number of seats captured. Aregression analysis of 1982 House election results provides empirical support for the model. The findings indicate that a complete reversal of party control of state government prior to redistricting would make it possible for the dominant party to gain 6% to 7% additional House seats, and would permit it to protect between 17% and 25% of its candidates from significant challenges from the other party. Studies which attempt to measure the presence of gerrymandering by concentrating on one measure or the other, but not both, will underestimate the effectiveness of redistricting as a partisan tool.