Partisan Control Of Government Research Articles

Policy Preferences and Policy Change: Dynamic Responsiveness in the American States, 1936–2014

Using eight decades of data, we examine the magnitude, mechanisms, and moderators of dynamic responsiveness in the American states. We show that on both economic and (especially) social issues, the liberalism of state publics predicts future change in state policy liberalism. Dynamic responsiveness is gradual, however; large policy shifts are the result of the cumulation of incremental responsiveness over many years. Partisan control of government appears to mediate only a fraction of responsiveness, suggesting that, contrary to conventional wisdom, responsiveness occurs in large part through the adaptation of incumbent officials. Dynamic responsiveness has increased over time but does not seem to be influenced by institutions such as direct democracy or campaign finance regulations. We conclude that our findings, though in some respects normatively ambiguous, on the whole paint a reassuring portrait of statehouse democracy.

The Social Determinants of Conspiratorial Ideation

Scholars have recently become increasingly interested in understanding the prevalence and persistence of conspiratorial beliefs among the public as recent research has shown such beliefs to be both widespread and to have deleterious effects on the political process. This article seeks to develop a sociological understanding of the structural conditions that are associated with conspiratorial belief. Using aggregate Google search data to measure public interest in two popular political conspiracy theories, the findings indicate that social conditions associated with threat and insecurity, including unemployment, changes in partisan control of government, and demographic changes, are associated with increased conspiratorial ideation.

Gubernatorial use of executive orders: unilateral action and policy adoption

AbstractI examine gubernatorial use of executive orders, and assess how executive action influences statute adoption. I argue that strong governors use executive orders to pursue policy objectives when they perceive legislation as unlikely to pass. Multilevel Event History Analysis of executive orders and the adoption of statutes that protect the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from 1975 to 2013 reveals that partisan control of government and intrastate factors influence both forms of policy adoption. My findings support the strategic model that argues that executives turn to executive orders when confronting unfavourable legislative conditions, and that governors issue protections more when entering office. Legislatures respond to partisan control of the legislature and social characteristics. Further, states that have pro-LGBT executive orders in place are more likely to adopt similar statutes. My results suggest that stronger governors are more likely to issue executive orders, but it is states with weaker governors that are more likely to adopt legislation.

Partisan Control of Government and Public Policy

We live in an era of unprecedented frequency of change in partisan control of government. Since at least 1994, neither of the United States’ two main political parties can be said to have had a lock on control of the House, the Senate, or the presidency. Incredibly, the seven elections from 1998 to 2010 produced six different combinations of party control: a Democratic president with a Republican Congress (1998), a Republican president with a divided Congress (2000), a Republican president with a Republican Congress (2002, 2004), a Republican president with a Democratic Congress (2006), a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress (2008), and a Democratic president with a divided Congress (2010). Do such changes in partisan control carry meaningful consequences for public policy and the quality of democracy in the United States? Focusing on the federal government, this chapter examines five related aspects of this question. First, it looks at the degree of differentiation in the policy preferences of the two parties, and how these differences may have changed over time. Second, it discusses the extent to which presidents are compatible with their co-partisans in the legislative branch. Third, it presents the debate over whether divided party control of government as opposed to unified control affects the volume or quality of policy outcomes. Fourth, it considers whether Democratic control as opposed to Republican control affects policy content. Finally, given that frequent changes in party control have become the norm, it discusses the effect that such alternations in power have on policy coherence and representation.

The (Non-)Effects of Campaign Finance Spending Bans on Macro Political Outcomes: Evidence from the States

This paper seeks to understand the effect of campaign finance laws on electoral and policy outcomes. Spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which eliminated bans on corporate and union political spending, the study focuses on whether such bans generate consequences notably different from an electoral system that lacks such bans. We observe three key outcomes: partisan control of government, incumbent reelection rates and corporate tax burdens. Using historical data on regulations in 49 American states between 1935 and 2009 we test alternative models for evaluating the impact of corporate and union spending bans put in place during this period. The results indicate that spending bans appear to have limited, if any, effect on these outcomes.

The Democratic Deficit in the States

We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state‐level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy‐specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking “democratic deficit”: policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.

Playing the Field: Federalism and the Politics of Venue Shopping in the United States and Canada

Research on interest group strategies in federal systems is converging with the venue shopping and multilevel lobbying literature in the European Union. Drawing on both literatures, the article compares the lobbying strategies of U.S. and Canadian interest groups during the economic crisis of 2008–2009. The impact of political institutional and political partisan factors on venue choice is analyzed in a comparative crucial case study of Michigan and Ontario. Statistical analysis of original survey data from ninety-eight business, trade, and professional associations indicates that neither interest group financial resources nor the severity of the crisis predict lobbying frequencies or targets. Two factors strongly influence where interest groups lobby: the relative importance of the government levels and the partisan control of government.

Public Budgeting in the French Fifth Republic: The End of La République des partis?

This article reviews trends in state spending across the Fifth Republic. Considering the partisan divisions in French political life and the importance accorded to elections and partisan control of government, one might expect substantial differences in spending patterns by governments of the Left and the Right. Instead, we find only a small number of statistically significant differences and when we do find them, governments of the Right are the higher spenders. The reasons for this are the different historical periods during which the Left and Right have been in power. As the Right dominated French politics for the first half of the Fifth Republic, it oversaw a period of the most dramatic growth in the state, across virtually all sectors. Growth in state spending declined steadily over the decades but particularly after the oil crisis and other events in the 1970s. Since 1981, when governments (if not presidential control) have alternated on a relatively regular basis, austerity and limited growth in spending have been the rule, no matter which governments have been in power. The article demonstrates these facts with a comprehensive overview of public spending across 11 categories. The results are presented graphically, with statistical t-tests, and finally with regressions controlling for growth in the economy. In all cases, no linkage between left-wing control of government and higher spending is found.

Disability Access and E-Government

Despite a body of federal and state laws and policies promoting access to e-government for individuals with disabilities, wide variation exists across the states in the level of Web site accessibility. This study seeks to identify factors accounting for why some states are more responsive than other states to the needs of people with disabilities in their use of e-government. Drawing on demographic, political, administrative, and economic arguments, the authors account for a substantial share of the variation among states using a model based on measures of need, partisan control of government, fiscal capacity, and state spending. The single most important variable in the model is the strength of a state's own technical assistance policy; the way a policy is formulated in terms of clarity of objectives and enforcement capacity is significant. The authors' findings have clear implications for policy formulation and implementation, and they suggest several avenues for future research.

The more things change, the more things stay the same: a comparative analysis of budget punctuations

In this paper I identify whether budgets in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States are punctuated and investigate the variation in budget punctuations over time. Building on stochastic process methods, I find that budgets in all four cases exhibit mostly incremental changes punctuated by extreme shifts. In order to explain variation in budget punctuations over time, I rely on two models: partisan control of government and partisan distance of the assembly. The two models are tested using national budgetary data across all government functions for the four countries from the mid-1960s to 1989. I find that greater distance in strength and ideology among parties leads to increases in the degree of punctuations in the German and the British cases, whereas there is some evidence for the partisan control model in the American cases. In the Danish cases, partisan distance reduces the degree of budget punctuations.

Endogenous Protection and Trade Negotiations

Research on the political economy of trade policy shows that a country's level of protection responds to variation in macroeconomic conditions and partisan control of government. Research on trade negotiations poses a challenge to the market-for-protection account provided by endogenous protection theory. Negotiations motivate exporters to lobby for domestic tariff cuts as a means of gaining reciprocal access to foreign markets. Responding to identical forces in the macroeconomy, import-competing industries and exporters lobby for opposite policy changes. As a result, the causal processes identified in endogenous protection theory are weakened or even reversed. I demonstrate that the incentives of exporters to lobby for tariff cuts are sharper than the corresponding incentives facing protectionist interests and that elected officials have reason to abandon some protectionist constituencies in order to cater to exporters. In a set of empirical tests, I show that tariffs do not respond to macroeconomic and partisan conditions as predicted by endogenous protection theory; instead, tariffs in the major trading states respond to the tariffs of their main negotiating partners.

The partisan paradox and the U.S. tariff, 1877–1934

Whereas historical accounts of U.S. tariff policy from 1877 to 1934 emphasize the pivotal role of parties, previous quantitative studies have failed to identify significant partisan effects. A formal model of policymaking in which strong parties aggregate voters' preferences provides empirical equations to test for partisan effects. Subsequent time series analysis shows that, even after controlling for interest group demands, partisan control of government did significantly affect the tariff. Moreover, during the period under study, the two political parties enacted tariff policies that benefited different sets of producer groups at the expense of others. Thus, political institutions did play a significant role in shaping the interests that influence U.S. foreign economic policy.