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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: [email protected]
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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

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