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Party Competition and Welfare Policies in the American States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Charles F. Cnudde  and
Donald J. Mccrone
Charles F. Cnudde
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Donald J. Mccrone
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Recent comparative, quantitative studies of state politics conclude that party competition and other political variables have little or no impact on important state policies such as per pupil expenditure, old age assistance, unemployment compensation, and aid to dependent children. These are rather unexpected and disturbing conclusions for they disconfirm relationships predicted by some of the most important theoretical formulations concerning democratic politics. Before re-examining the bases for these conclusions, a review of theory is in order.

V. O. Key, Jr., set the context for examining the effects of political variables on state policies. He stressed the importance of two-party competition, or bi-factionalism in one-party states, as a determinant of policy. Key sees the degree of party competition as crucial because it reflects the extent to which politics is organized or unorganized. Party competition by producing some semblance of an organized politics lessens the difficulty of lower status groups in sorting out political actors and issues, thereby enabling them to promote their own interests more effectively. Since state social welfare policies are undoubtedly relevant to the interests of “have-nots,” we can utilize state expenditures in this area as a measure of the success that these groups have enjoyed. Key's formulation, then, would lead to a simple two variable model:

P = e1

S = k1P + ez

Where P is inter-party competition, S is expenditure on social welfare, and e1 and ez represent error or variables left out of the system, and k1 is a constant.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , November 1969 , pp. 858 - 866
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1969

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Footnotes

*

The research reported here was supported by the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin and by funds granted to the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin by the Office of Economic Opportunity pursuant to the provision of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The conclusions are the sole responsibility of the authors. They wish to acknowledge gratefully the assistance of Martin Abravanel.

References

1 See, especially Dawson, Richard E. and Robinson, James A., “Inter-Party Competition, Economic Variables and Welfare Policies in the American States,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 25 (1963), pp. 265–289 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dye, Thomas R., Politics, Economics and the Public (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1966)Google Scholar.

2 Key, V. O. Jr., Southern Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1949), p. 307 Google Scholar.

3 Lockard, Duane, New England State Politics (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1959), see, especially, pp. 336–337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Dawson and Robinson, op. cit., and Dye, op. cit.

5 Easton, David, “An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems,” World Politics, 9 (1957), 383–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Key, loc. cit.

7 See, Ira Sharkansky and Richard I. Hofferbert, “Dimensions of State Politics, Economics, and Public Policy,” in this issue of this Review.

8 Lockard, op. cit.

9 For example, see Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., “Constituency Influence in Congress,” this Review, 57 (1963), 45–56 Google Scholar.

10 For the argument in this and the subsequent paragraph, see, Blalock, Hubert M. Jr., Causal Inferences in Non-Experimental Research (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 83–87 Google Scholar.

11 See mathematical appendix below.

12 Ibid.

13 Blalock, Hubert M. Jr., Social Statistics (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1960), p. 355 Google Scholar.

14 Data for per pupil expenditures and per receipt payments for old age assistance, unemployment compensation, and aid to dependent children taken from The Book of the States: 1962–63 (Chicago: Council of State Governments, 1963)Google Scholar. Data for Hawaii and Alaska, not included.

15 Our measure of party competition is drawn from Ranney, Austin, “Political Parties,” in Jacob, Herbert and Vines, Kenneth (eds.), Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1965), pp. 64–65 Google Scholar, which combines competition for governor, the lower house, the upper house, and percent of divided executive-legislative control into one overall index of party competition. Our indices of wealth (per capita income), urbanization (percent urban), education (median school year completed), and percent in nonagricultural occupations for 1960–61 were drawn from Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1962 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962)Google Scholar.

16 See Dye, op. cit.

17 See McCrone, Donald J. and Cnudde, Charles F., “On Measuring Public Policy,” in Crew, Robert E. Jr. (ed.), State Politics: Readings on Political Behavior (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 523–530 Google Scholar for an attempt to measure a qualitative output of state systems—anti-discrimination laws.

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