Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency,Political Institutions,and Electoral Incentives

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits.     

Bureaucratic Leverage over Policy Choice: Explaining the Dynamics of State-Level Reforms in Telecommunications Regulation

While state governments have enjoyed greater control over regulating local telephone service providers since 1984, movement toward efficiency-based policy reform (e.g., adoption of competitive markets) has proceeded slowly. We investigate this pattern by addressing how the degree of policy discretion held by state public utility commissions (PUCs) affects reform of local telephone exchange regulation. Using precise measures of both PUC discretion and state policy changes over time, we find that states with "stronger" PUCs (more policymaking authority) are significantly more likely to move toward efficiency-based policy regimes and away from traditional rate-of-return regimes. Greater PUC discretion systematically related to state adoption of efficiency-based reforms over time suggests that regulators are using updated information about policy impacts to inform their policymaking activities. Our findings contradict a common presumption that regulatory bureaucracies are simply motivated by a desire to increase their control over policymaking. Instead, state PUCs are a key source of telecommunications policy reform in the states.     

State Expenditures and Policy Outcomes in Environmental Program Management

Comparative state environmental research seeks to explain the factors contributing to intergovernmental environmental management. In pursuing the answer to this query, researchers have relied on either fiscal (expenditures) or nonfiscal (ranking) measures of state environmental effort. Respecting the debate surrounding state policy outputs and fiscal versus nonfiscal measures, we evaluate comprehensive state environmental management comparing spending and ranking measures in our analysis. Though pronounced differences do exist between the two models, we find pollution and state size to be the primary factors affecting a state's environmental effort no matter which measure is used.     

Institutions,Incentives, and Policy Entrepreneurship

Policy entrepreneurship is often used to explain agenda setting through reference to the behavior of individual “change agents.” But there are still gaps in our understanding of what motivates entrepreneurs. Rational choice theory emphasizes the importance of material and nonmaterial incentives; however, it remains unclear what role institutions play. This article aims to empirically examine the relationship between incentives and institutional encouragement of innovation. Using a case study of the federal government of Canada, I find evidence that incentives matter. Government agencies with many incentives are more likely to encourage innovation than agencies with few incentives. These results underscore the importance of institutions in determining the motivations of policy entrepreneurs, and suggest future research should focus on the interplay among individual, political, and institutional factors.     

Renewable Energy Politics: Policy Typologies,Policy Tools,and State Deployment of Renewables

This paper investigates the competing forces driving the development of renewable energy in the American states. We formulate a framework of state renewable energy politics and develop a set of hypotheses regarding the role of politics, policies, and prices in renewable energy development. We test these hypotheses with a fixed effect vector decomposition model using a panel data set for the U.S. states from 1990 to 2008. The results indicate that renewable energy development is influenced by regulatory institutions, the party affiliations of the governor and legislators, and the professionalism of the legislature, accompanied by the effects of various policy instruments.     

Policy Interaction in the Provision of Unemployment Insurance and Low-Income Assistance by State Governments

In this paper we investigate empirical relationships between Unemployment Insurance (UI) and welfare policies using a unique database covering 48 states annually from 1973 through 1989. We first document substantial variation across states in UI program outcomes. Having established that UI is so variable, we explore the simultaneous interaction between UI and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid, and total state and local welfare spending. Our econometric results indicate substitution between the two cash assistance programs, AFDC and UI, by state governments. On the other hand, states that operate relatively generous UI programs also tend to allocate more resources to Medicaid and other in-kind, low-income assistance programs.     

Revolution, State Building, and Foreign Policy

Book reviewed in this article:
Daniela Spenser, The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the United States in 1920s     

The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This "harmonized" policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.     

Seeking the State: Appropriating Bureaucratic Symbolism and Wealth in the Margins of Southeast Asia

Anthropological research on Southeast Asian states has contributed to understanding how local communities engage with states in their everyday lives. Two approaches drawing out the complexities of state‐society entanglement stand out. First is Foucault's idea that states possess the art‐of‐government. Through techniques such as mapping, census data, biometrics and so on, states are believed to achieve new levels of control over people, who are thus rendered as individual citizens. Second is Scott's idea that societies possess the art‐of‐not‐being‐governed. People, particularly in peripheral areas, seek to escape state control, for instance by sheltering in the hills and forests of Asia. In this article, we seek to identify and expand upon a literature which we see as emerging from the space opened between Foucault and Scott's work, to demonstrate the many creative and diverse ways that peripheral societies seek out states. In doing this we present a synthesis of diverse forms of entanglement to provide new insights into understanding relations between societies and states.     

State,Industrialization and Agricultural Policy in Korea

Analyses of Korean (Republic of Korea) development point to the strong role of the state in directing the industrialization process. State intervention has also been pronounced in agriculture, as state agents have mobilized bureaucratic resources to direct agricultural production activities in support of the national development project through the creation of strategic agroindustrial linkages. The Korean green revolution campaign to achieve rice self-sufficiency is used to illustrate the state's role in fostering intersectoral linkages. Agriculture is brought back into the debate about Korean development.     

Cold War,Public Opinion,and Foreign Policy Spending Decisions: Dynamic Representation by Congress and the President

Conventional wisdom before the Vietnam War held that public opinion exerted no influence on U.S. foreign policy decisions. Scholars working in Vietnam's aftermath found episodic influence of public opinion on foreign policy, but missing in our understanding were longitudinal examinations of public opinion's influence on foreign policy. A number of post-Vietnam scholars subsequently revealed a long-term relationship between public opinion and defense spending. This study extends that work by analyzing responsiveness to public opinion in different foreign policy arenas by different government institutions, and by accounting for a critical variable not relevant in most previous studies: the end of the cold war. We construct a model explaining the influences of public opinion and the cold war on spending proposals for defense and foreign economic aid by the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both public opinion and the end of the cold war exert direct influence on defense spending proposals by the presidency, while the Senate and the House respond primarily to public opinion inputs and the partisan composition of the Senate. In the case of foreign economic aid, the cold war's end gives occasion for increasing spending proposals, contrary to the public's expectation that the end of the cold war minimized the need for the U.S. to provide foreign economic assistance.     

Local Institutions and Environmental Outcomes: Evidence from Wetlands Protection in Massachusetts

Community‐based efforts to address environmental problems occupy an increasingly large space on the environmental policy landscape. Advocates argue that local environmental institutions (LEIs) can deliver both procedural and environmental quality benefits. Yet, despite over a decade of expansive support, the performance of LEIs remains largely unknown, particularly with regard to environmental outcomes. In this article, we consider new environmental outcome data we compiled from local efforts to implement the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. We find that stronger forms of LEIs generate both quantitatively and qualitatively better environmental outcomes, which suggests that LEIs may live up to their advocates’ expectations.     

Access to the Information Age: Fundamental Decisions in Telecommunications Policy

As federal and state budget sheets show more red than black ink, the private sector is delivering more social services and even protecting rights. The experience of disability rights leaders during the past five years shows that the private sector will accept such obligations as long as the burden is evenly distributed throughout an industry. They will balk if it is not. The task of ensuring access and fairness for people with disabilities in an industry where equal allocation of social responsibility is difficult is illustrated by the continuing effort of disability rights leaders for accessibility to Information Age telecommunications products and services. The effort also highlights a recurring theme in public policy: Does equity mean that all Americans pay a little more so that those with disabilities gain full access, or does it mean that overall rates are kept low while those with special needs use adaptive devices? Each point of view was illustrated in the telecommunications policy debate of the 102nd Congress-and likely will shape that of the 103rd Congress as well.     

The National Flood Insurance Program: A Case Study in Policy Failure,Reform, and Retrenchment

In this paper, I present an intensive case study of the development of the National Flood Insurance Program to advance two key arguments. First, the conventional model of adoption of general interest reform neglects an important aspect of political context: whether the relevant policy domain is one with or without “publics.” I argue that in domains without publics the politics of reform will differ substantially from the accepted model. Second, I argue that the type of learning necessary to address a given policy failure matters in reform politics. Instrumental learning is necessary but may not be sufficient for successful general interest reforms. When the social construction of a policy failure is such that many people misconceive of the fundamental purpose of a policy, social learning must take place before instrumental learning can be effective.     

Policy Influence and Policy Responsiveness in State Pollution Control

This article develops an integrated theory of state policy influence and responsiveness, then operationalizes this theory to account for variations in the strength and scope of state water pollution control and hazardous waste management programs. The analysis finds that economic, ideological, interest group, and political system characteristics act in concert to affect state policymaking, and that the influences behind policymaking vary systematically and predictably across policy areas within environmental protection.