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Tax Revolts and Political Change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
Extract
The adoption of Proposition 13 in 1978 sent shock waves throughout the American polity. California's attack on property taxes was not the first fiscal limitation adopted in the 1970s, but it carried clear national implications that the earlier measures lacked. By successfully challenging the political establishment, the initiative drive in the Golden State energized campaigns elsewhere to restrict taxes. The echo of Proposition 13 reverberated in Massachusetts, whose voters approved a cap on property taxes (Proposition 2 ½) in 1980. Citizens on the nation's two coasts had signaled thumbs down on fiscal affairs in their states.
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- Journal of Policy History , Volume 10 , Special Issue 1: Loss of Confidence: Politics and Policy in the 1970s , January 1998 , pp. 153 - 178
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- Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1998
References
Notes
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41. Moreover, states in the traditional-party/no initiative category that enacted limitation measures had lower readings on the Mayhew Traditional Party Organization scale than did the states that avoided cap laws. The three states that adopted property-levy limitations were Indiana, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
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53. Campbell, The Growth of American Government, 2–5, and Federalism and Public Performance: Perspectives on American Political Development (forthcoming) develops this typology.
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