Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T04:25:38.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Partisan Misalignment and the Counter-Partisan Response: How National Politics Conditions Majority-Party Policy Making in the American States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2021

Nicholas S. Miras Open the ORCID record for Nicholas S. Miras [Opens in a new window]  and
Stella M. Rouse Open the ORCID record for Stella M. Rouse [Opens in a new window]
Nicholas S. Miras
Affiliation:
Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
Stella M. Rouse*
Affiliation:
Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: srouse@umd.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When one political party gains control of American national governing institutions, it increases the prospects of enacting its policy agenda. Faced with this partisan misalignment, the authors expect state governments controlled by the national out-party to respond to the national partisan context with more state policy activism. The study examines changes in state policy liberalism from 1974 to 2019, and finds that both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states have pushed policy further in their preferred ideological directions when the opposing party has greater partisan control over the national policy agenda in Washington. It also identifies differences between the two parties. While the effect of Republican control modestly increases as Democrats gain power at the national level, Democratic-controlled states have shown dramatically larger shifts in policy liberalism during periods of Republican national control. This arrangement, however, appears to be a contemporary one, emerging in the more polarized political environment since the mid-1990s.

Keywords

state politicsfederal–state relationsunified governmentdivided governmentpolicy liberalism
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 573 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, AI (2010) The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, AI and Webster, S (2016) The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of US elections in the 21st century. Electoral Studies 41, 12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achen, CH (2000) Why Lagged Dependent Variables Can Suppress the Explanatory Power of Other Independent Variables. Presented at the Annual Meeting of Political Methodology, Los Angeles. Available from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~franzese/Achen.2000.LDVstealingExplanPower.pdf.Google Scholar
Barrilleaux, C (1997) A test of the independent influences of electoral competition and party strength in a model of state policy-making. American Journal of Political Science 41(4), 1462–1466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrilleaux, C and Rainey, C (2014) The politics of need: examining governors’ decisions to oppose the ‘Obamacare’ Medicaid expansion. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 14(4), 437–460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, FR and Jones, BD (2010) Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bawn, K, et al. (2012) A theory of political parties: groups, policy demands, and nominations in American politics. Perspectives on Politics 10(3), 571–597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, N and Katz, JN (1995) What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data. American Political Science Review 89(3), 634–647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, N and Katz, JN (2011) Modeling dynamics in time-series-cross-section political economy data. Annual Review of Political Science 14(1), 331–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, CR, Burden, BC and Howell, WG (2010) After enactment: the lives and deaths of federal programs. American Journal of Political Science 54(1), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, WD et al. (1998) Measuring citizen and government ideology in the American states, 1960–1993. American Journal of Political Science 42(1), 327–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binder, SA (1999) The dynamics of legislative gridlock, 1947–96. American Political Science Review 93(3), 519–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binder, SA (2014) Polarized We Govern? Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Bishop, B (2009) The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. New York: Haughton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Bowen, DC and Greene, Z (2014) Should we measure professionalism with an index? A note on theory and practice in state legislative professionalism index. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 14(3), 277–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, AR (2010) Are governors responsible for the state economy? Partisanship, blame, and divided federalism. The Journal of Politics 72(3), 605–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulman-Pozen, J (2014) Partisan federalism. Harvard Law Review 127(4), 1077–1146.Google Scholar
Caughey, D and Warshaw, C (2016) The dynamics of state policy liberalism, 1936–2014. American Journal of Political Science 60(4), 899–913.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, D, Warshaw, C and Xu, Y (2017) Incremental democracy: the policy effects of partisan control of state government. The Journal of Politics 79(4), 1342–1358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Congressional Quarterly (2018) CQ Voting and Elections Collection. Available from http://library.cqpress.com/elections/.Google Scholar
Cox, GW and McCubbins, MD (2005) Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the US House of Representatives. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daigneau, E (2010) 2010 state legislatures: GOP chalks up historic gains. Governing, 3 November. Available from https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/2010-state-legislatures-republicans-historic-gains.html.Google Scholar
de León, K and Rendon, A (2016) Joint Statement from California Legislative Leaders on Result of Presidential Election. 9 November. Available from http://sd24.senate.ca.gov/news/2016-11-09-joint-statement-california-legislative-leaders-result-presidential-election.Google Scholar
Erikson, RS, Wright, GC and McIver, JP (1993) Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, A and Loken, E (2013) The garden of forking paths: Why multiple comparisons can be a problem, even when there is no ‘fishing expedition’ or ‘p-hacking’ and the research question was posited ahead of time. Retrieved from http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/p_hacking.pdf.Google Scholar
Gray, V et al. (2004) Public opinion, public policy, and organized interests in the American states. Political Research Quarterly 57(3), 411–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenblatt, A (2019) All or Nothing. Governing (January). Available from https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-state-politics-governors-2019.html.Google Scholar
Grossman, M and Hopkins, DA (2016) Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grumbach, JM (2018) From backwaters to major policymakers: policy polarization in the states, 1970–2014. Perspectives on Politics 16(2), 416–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grunwald, M (2016) The victory of ‘no’. Politico, 4 December. Available from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/republican-party-obstructionism-victory-trump-214498.Google Scholar
Hirsch, BT, Macpherson, DA and Vroman, WG (2001) Estimates of union density by state. Monthly Labor Review 124(7), 51–55.Google Scholar
Hopkins, DJ (2018) The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, WG (2003) Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, WG and Lewis, DE (2002) Agencies by presidential design. The Journal of Politics 64(4), 1095–1114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S, Sood, G and Lelkes, Y (2012) Affect, not ideology: a social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 76(3), 405–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, JM (2017) Governors and partisan polarization in the federal arena. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 47(3), 314–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keele, L and Kelly, NJ (2006) Dynamic models for dynamic theories: the ins and outs of lagged dependent variables. Political Analysis 14(2), 186–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, J (1990) From cooperative to coercive federalism. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 509(1), 139–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klarner, C (2013) State Partisan Balance Data, 1937–2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/20403. Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Krane, D (2007) The middle tier in American federalism: state government policy activism during the Bush presidency. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37(3), 453–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K (1996) Institutional and partisan sources of gridlock: a theory of divided and unified government. Journal of Theoretical Politics 8(1), 7–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K (1998) Pivotal Politics: A Theory of US Lawmaking. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, JR and Phillips, JH (2011) The democratic deficit in the states. American Journal of Political Science 56(1), 148–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layman, GC, Carsey, TM and Horowitz, JM (2006) Party polarization in American politics: characteristics, causes, and consequences. Annual Review of Political Science 9, 83–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, FE (2015) How party polarization affects governance. Annual Review of Political Science 18, 261–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, A, Lin, C-F and Chu, C-SJ (2002) Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties. Journal of Econometrics 108(1), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2013) The rise of uncivil agreement: issue versus behavioral polarization in the American electorate. American Behavioral Scientist 57(1), 140–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2018) Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, DR (2005) Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946–2002, 2nd Edn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Miras, N and Rouse, SM (2021) Replication Data for: Partisan misalignment and the counter-partisan response: how national politics conditions majority-party policy making in the American states, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KRAUZP, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:bpcz5YI2d1ZpRHjSXNptnA== [fileUNF]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, W (2004) Party activists, campaign resources and candidate position taking: candidates, tests, and applications. British Journal of Political Science 34(4), 611–633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, J (2018) California lawmakers wrote 1,016 new laws this year. Here's some of what did and didn't make it. The Los Angeles Times, 2 October. Available from https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-laws-passed-vetoes-jerry-brown-analysis-20181002-story.html?int=lat_digitaladshouse_bx-modal_acquisition-subscriber_ngux_display-ad-interstitial_bx-bonus-story_______.Google Scholar
National Conference of State Legislatures (2019) State Partisan Composition. Available from http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx.Google Scholar
Nicholson-Crotty, S (2012) Leaving money on the table: learning from recent refusals of federal grants in the American states. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 42(3), 449–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickell, S (1981) Biases in dynamic models with fixed effects. Econometrica 49(6), 1417–1426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, A, Callaghan, T and Karch, A (2017) Return of the ‘rightful remedy’: partisan federalism, resource availability, and nullification legislation in the American states. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 48(3), 495–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, P (2007) The politics of coercive federalism in the Bush era. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37(3), 390–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliff, B and Saiz, M (1998) Labor organization and public policy in the American states. The Journal of Politics 60(1), 113–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragusa, JM (2010) The lifecycle of public policy: an event history analysis of repeals to landmark legislative enactments, 1951–2006. American Politics Research 38(6), 1015–1051.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigby, E (2012) State resistance to ‘Obamacare’. The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 10(2). Available from https://doi.org/10.1515/1540-8884.1501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riotta, C (2017) GOP aims to kill Obamacare yet again after failing 70 times. Newsweek, 29 July. Available from https://www.newsweek.com/gop-health-care-bill-repeal-and-replace-70-failed-attempts-643832.Google Scholar
Robertson, DB (2012) Federalism and the Making of America. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rogers, S (2018) The blue wave was big – and significant – in state legislatures. The Washington Post, 12 November. Available from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/12/the-blue-wave-was-big-and-significant-in-state-legislatures/.Google Scholar
Shelly, B (2008) Rebels and their causes: state resistance to no child left behind. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 38(3), 444–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorens, J, Meudini, F and Ruger, WP (2008) US state and local public policies in 2006: a new database. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 8(3), 309–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soss, J et al. (2001) Setting the terms of relief: explaining state policy choices in the devolution revolutions. American Journal of Political Science 45(2), 378–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thiess, R (2013) What Do Current Federal Funding Levels in the Wake of Sequestration Mean for State Budgets? Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #363. Available from https://www.epi.org/files/2013/ib363-sequestration-and-state-budgets.pdf.Google Scholar
Vock, DC (2016) How Obama Changed the Relationship Between Washington, the States and the Cities. Governing (June). Available from https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-obama-federalism.html.Google Scholar
Witko, C and Newmark, AJ (2005) Business mobilization and public policy in the US states. Social Science Quarterly 86(2), 356–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, GC, Erikson, RS and McIver, JP (1987) Public opinion and policy liberalism in the American states. American Journal of Political Science 31(4), 980–1001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Miras and Rouse Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KRAUZP
Link
Supplementary material: File

Miras and Rouse supplementary material

Miras and Rouse supplementary material

Download Miras and Rouse supplementary material(File)
File 74.7 KB