I estimate the impact of Nebraska's 1937 switch from a bicameral to a unicameral legislature on state-level government expenditures. Using the synthetic control method I create a counterfactual Nebraska from a weighted average of other potential control states and compare spending in this “synthetic Nebraska” to spending in the real Nebraska. Relative to the synthetic control, Nebraska experiences a sharp decrease in expenditures per capita immediately following the switch to a unicameral legislature; however, the difference appears to diminish over time. Placebo tests show that if the change in Nebraska's legislative structure were randomly assigned among the sample of states, and legislative structure had no real impact on spending, the likelihood of obtaining a treatment-effect estimate as large as Nebraska's would be 0.0213. While the initial drop in expenditures per capita lends support to the theory that bicameralism, by requiring more veto players, is associated with higher levels of government spending, the fact that the difference between Nebraska and synthetic Nebraska diminishes suggests that legislators are able to circumvent this constraint.

The parties as networks approach has become a critical component of understanding American political parties. Research on it has so far mainly focused on variation in the placement of candidates within a network at the national level. This is in part due to a lack of data on state-level party networks. In this article, I fill that gap by developing state party networks for 47 states from 2000 to 2016 using candidate donation data. To do this, I introduce a backboning network analysis method not yet used in political science to infer relationships among donors at the state level. Finally, I validate these state networks and then show how parties have varied across states and over time. The networks developed here will be made publicly available for future research. Being able to quantify variation in party network structure will be important for understanding variation in party-policy linkages at the state level.

The state courts of last resort are vital components of American judicial system, disposing of many important legal matters. The chief justices of these courts serve consequential roles in these institutions. Although scholars have examined the selection and duties of states' chief justices, their interactions with the elected branches are understudied. We focus on how chief justices on state high courts use their roles to encourage judicial reform. Specifically, we examine the determinants of chief justices' successes or failures as advocates for their justice systems. To analyze why chief justices succeed or fail as reform advocates, we analyze the fate of reform proposals offered in state of the judiciary addresses. Our results indicate that greater ideological similarity between the state legislature and chief justice or state supreme court median increases the odds of an agenda item being enacted. We also find that the scope of a policy request influences the likelihood it will be granted.

Recent studies of representation at the national and state levels have provided evidence that elected officials' votes, political parties' platforms, and enacted policy choices are more responsive to the preferences of the affluent, while those with average incomes and the poor have little or no impact on the political process. Yet, this research on the dominance of the affluent has overlooked key partisan differences in the electorate. In this era of hyperpartisanship, we argue that representation occurs through the party system, and we test whether taking this reality into account changes the story of policy dominance by the rich. We combine data on public preferences and state party positions to test for income bias in parties' representation of their own co-partisans. The results show an interesting pattern in which underrepresentation of the poor is driven by Democratic parties pushing the more liberal social policy stances of rich Democrats and Republican parties reflecting the particularly conservative economic policy preferences of rich Republicans. Thus, we have ample evidence that the wealthy, more often than not, do call the shots, but that the degree to which this disproportionate party responsiveness produces less representative policies depends on the party in power and the policy dimension being considered. We conclude by linking this pattern of influence and “coincidental representation” to familiar changes which define the transformation of the New Deal party system.

Legislators who know their constituents' opinions are more likely to be successful in providing substantive representation on issues of the day. However, previous work suggests that state legislators and candidates commonly misestimate their constituents' preferences. Some of that work also finds that candidates and current incumbents in highly professionalized legislatures are less likely to misestimate constituent opinion. We investigate why this professionalism advantage exists. We use a Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition to determine how much of the professionalism advantage can be attributed to three sources: attracting knowledgeable candidates, fostering legislator knowledge in office, and retaining incumbents. We apply the decomposition to data on candidates' perceptions of public opinion from the 2014 National Candidate Survey. Fostering knowledge in office and retaining incumbents are not responsible for the professionalism advantage. We find evidence that the professionalism advantage occurs because higher professionalism legislatures attract more knowledgeable nonincumbent candidates.

Using data from nearly 5,000 votes cast by more than 400 judges in courts of last resort from all 50 states, we investigate whether there is a relationship between a state's judicial retention method and the likelihood that a judge votes to join a precedent-overturning majority. We find that relative to judges retained by institutions such as judicial commissions or state legislatures, those retained via either partisan or retention elections are significantly more likely to join majorities that overturn precedent. Most of this effect is due to behavior in high-profile cases that garner media attention. We find little evidence that an impending election moderates these effects. Finally, we find no evidence that judges retained via nonpartisan elections treat precedent differently than their institutionally retained colleagues.

Washington and California adopted the Top-Two Primary in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Under this new system, all candidates regardless of party affiliation run against each other, narrowing the field down to the top two for the general election. In some jurisdictions, the general election features two candidates from the same party. Ten percent of California voters chose not to vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate election which featured two Democrats. Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (2012-2016), I find that among those who vote in the national November elections, orphans, or voters without a copartisan candidate on the ballot are more likely to undervote, opting out of voting in their congressional race. Levels of undervoting are nearly 20 percentage points higher for orphaned voters compared to non-orphaned voters. Additionally, voters who abstain perceive more ideological distance between themselves and the candidates compared to voters who cast a vote. These findings support a multi-step framework for vote decisions in same-party matchups: voters are more likely to undervote if they are unable to vote for a candidate from their party (partisan model), but all voters are more likely to vote for a candidate when they perceive ideological proximity (ideological model).

Most research studying minority representation concludes that minorities enjoy better representation when they constitute a larger share of a constituency, but only through the partisanship and race/ethnicity of the representative. Other research finds that minorities receive worse representation when they constitute a larger share of a constituency. We argue that minority composition will have an independent effect on representation, but that this effect will differ depending on the representative's partisanship. We apply our theory to Latino composition and state legislative voting on immigration policy and find that Latino composition has no effect on voting among Democratic legislators, who are less likely to vote in a restrictive direction on immigration than Republicans regardless of the Latino composition in their district. However, Republicans are more likely to vote to restrict immigration as Latinos comprise a larger share of their district. Our findings suggest that scholars should consider the moderating effect of legislator partisanship when examining minority composition and representation.

Why do some people evaluate state supreme courts as more legitimate than others? Conventional academic wisdom suggests that people evaluate courts in nonpartisan ways, and that people make a distinction between how they evaluate individual court decisions and how they evaluate the court's legitimacy more broadly. We challenge this idea by arguing that people's partisan identities have a strong influence on how people evaluate the impartiality of courts, just as they do other aspects of the political world. Using original survey experiments, validated by existing observational survey data, we show that people perceive state supreme courts as being more impartial when courts issue decisions that match the ideological preferences of their preferred political party, while court decisions at odds with their party's policy goals diminish people's belief that courts are impartial arbiters of the law. We also show that the effects of citizen perceptions of impartiality erode evaluations of state court legitimacy, which makes them want to limit the independence of judicial institutions.

Research finds that voters benchmark the state's unemployment level to the nation's when holding state policy makers accountable. Yet benchmarking requires some voter knowledge if the standard is to be applied correctly as an accountability rule. This article leverages the fact that voters have more knowledge about their state governors than legislatures assess how much knowledge is necessary for holding these policy makers accountable. Using pooled Cooperative Congressional Election Study data from 2006 to 2016, results find that knowledge has stronger mediating effects for the state legislature than governor. Furthermore, despite the low knowledge levels among voters about the state legislature, collectively there appears to be enough knowledge to hold that policymaking body accountable. The conclusion offers directions for future research.

A substantial body of empirical work documents the influence of federal monies on state policy making. Less attention, however, has been paid to the conditioning effects of states' prior financial health. Nearly always, apportioned monies cover only a fraction of the costs of federal policy reforms. The capacity of states to deploy supplementary resources, therefore, may inform the willingness of states to comply with the federal government's policy objectives. Focusing on Barack Obama's Race to the Top (RttT) initiative, we present new evidence that state responses to federal initiatives that carry financial rewards systematically vary with the amount of resources already on hand. States that survived the Great Recession with their education budgets largely intact, we find, tended to implement more RttT reforms overall, and especially more reforms that required substantial up-front financial commitments. These patterns of policy adoptions can be meaningfully attributed to RttT, are not the result of either prior or ancillary policy trends, and speak to the general importance of accounting for what states already have, above and beyond what the federal government is willing to offer, when studying the financial incentives of vertical diffusion.

Are the origins of trust in state government different from the reasons why people trust the national government? I argue that trust in state government has distinctive origins, tied to differences in how states operate within a federal system of government. Leveraging variations in the character of the states, I consider whether trust in state government is a function of its proximity to citizens, people's relative preferences for smaller government, and the homogeneity of state electorates. Using responses to the 2017 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show feelings of trust in state government follow not only from state political conditions and economic performance but also from the distinctive character of the states. These findings challenge prior accounts that argue that diffuse trust in state government reflects only how people feel about the national government, and highlight how large states and small states face different challenges in cultivating trust in state government.

Political scientists and policy scholars have traditionally looked at the role of welfare and tax policies in shaping income inequality. Less attention has been paid to the key policy area of economic development. But states spend billions on economic development incentives each year to encourage firms to locate in their state. The few studies that have examined the impact of economic development policy on inequality have found mixed results, and have not considered who shapes and benefits from economic development policy when identifying possible causal mechanisms. I argue that increased incentive spending leads to increased inequality through either a market conditioning effect (incentives disproportionately boost the incomes of top earners prior to taxes) or a redistributive effect (incentives allow wealthy firms, investors, and employees to keep income that would otherwise be taxed and transferred). These mechanisms are tested using data on incentive spending and inequality across the 50 states from 1999 to 2014. The findings demonstrate that incentives increase income inequality via a redistributive effect only. This effect, though, is relatively large, long-lasting, and robust to different measures of incentive spending. Despite using economic development incentives to try to generate greater prosperity, state governments may be inadvertently exacerbating inequality.

This article explores diversity within top leadership positions in state governments, specifically, the role that position selection method plays in promoting the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities into positions of power. We hypothesize that minorities will be more likely to serve in appointed positions as governors consider diversity in making appointments and less likely to serve in elected positions due to the additional hurdles for candidates of color. Using an original data set of state executive leaders from 2001 to 2017 from all 50 states, we find evidence that institutional design influences levels of diversity among state executive leaders. Racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be appointed than elected to state executive leadership positions. In addition, we find that Democratic governors are more likely than Republican governors to appoint minorities. Ultimately, this evidence is important for understanding how institutional design can have consequences for descriptive representation, specifically for groups that have been historically excluded from political life.

Scholars of comparative constitution-making and direct democracy agree that economic conditions affect public support for constitutional reform but disagree as to how. Prospect theory suggests both approaches may be correct, depending on the political and economic context in which voters operate. Fourteen states periodically ask their citizens whether to call a state constitutional convention, making this the oldest form of direct democracy in the United States. We test our theory in preelection polls in two of these states and a survey experiment. According to the results, negative perceptions of economic and government performance increase support for conventions when voters view them as opportunities to correct problems. On the other hand, if a convention represents a chance to improve on an acceptable status quo, voters with positive performance evaluations become more supportive. Our findings contribute to the heuristics literature and inform normative debates over direct democracy and popular constitutionalism.

Members of historically underrepresented groups—women, African Americans, Latinos, and workers—are serving in American legislatures in increasing numbers. However, legislators wield substantially greater power in the lawmaking process when they hold leadership positions. Incorporation of these groups into leadership positions could indicate fuller political representation, but scholars to date have not assessed how well these groups are represented in leadership. We analyze original data describing the backgrounds of approximately 2,200 leaders in 30 states between 2003 and 2014. The data show that, on average across states, members of these groups are as well represented in state legislative leadership positions as they are in rank-and-file membership, but there is substantial variation across states and across parties. We then ask what factors might explain this variation and explore institutional characteristics, like the number of leadership positions or leader selection methods. The results show that legislative chambers with a higher number of leadership posts tend to have more women in leadership, and that selection through elections is associated with decreased African American presence in leadership. The findings have implications for minority incorporation and influence in American politics.

States are uniquely situated as both individual governments in the federal system and entities that represent the interests of their citizens. So, what makes groups of states successful when they lobby the Supreme Court as amicus curiae filers? I argue that it is not just the number of states included in a coalition that matters, but rather which states are included. In this article, I offer a theory that implies certain types of coalitions will be more influential than others, as these coalitions can vary in how representative they are of public preferences. I use a dataset on state amicus curiae filings from 1960 to 2013 to test the implications of my theory. I find that the regional diversity of coalitions increases the odds of state amicus curiae filers obtaining their preferred outcome, but the ideological heterogeneity of the group of states does not. This latter result is interesting given that it is contrary to the theoretical expectations of the existing scholarship on state amicus filings.

I argue that the value of a particular set of committee assignments for a legislator is dependent on that legislator's policy interests. By this, I mean that “good” assignments will match committee policy jurisdictions with member policy priorities. I develop this concept of committee-agenda matching and present a measure of this match for legislators in 12 state lower chambers. After some brief measure validation, I present a substantive application, demonstrating that this match poses serious consequences for individual legislator's ability to shepherd their bills through the legislative process.

The regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a valuable tool for identifying causal effects with observational data. However, applying the traditional electoral RDD to the study of divided government is challenging. Because assignment to treatment in this case is the result of elections to multiple institutions, there is no obvious single forcing variable. Here, we use simulations in which we apply shocks to real-world election results in order to generate two measures of the likelihood of divided government, both of which can be used for causal analysis. The first captures the electoral distance to divided government and can easily be utilized in conjunction with the standard sharp RDD toolkit. The second is a simulated probability of divided government. This measure does not easily fit into a sharp RDD framework, so we develop a probability restricted design (PRD) which relies upon the underlying logic of an RDD. This design incorporates common regression techniques but limits the sample to those observations for which assignment to treatment approaches “as-if random.” To illustrate both of our approaches, we reevaluate the link between divided government and the size of budget deficits.

The use of deception is common in elite correspondence audit studies. Elite audit studies are a type of field experiment used by researchers to test for discrimination against vulnerable populations seeking to access government resources. These studies have provided invaluable insights, but they have done so at the cost of using deception. They have relied on identity, activity, and motivation deception. In addition, they request unnecessary work. Is there a less deceptive alternative? In this article, I present results from a field experiment with state legislative offices that minimize the use of deception. Consistent with elite correspondence audit studies, I find evidence of discrimination against Hispanics among state legislative offices. In addition, I find that discrimination is mitigated when subjects believe their behavior will be public knowledge. This suggests that discrimination can be mitigated through increased monitoring. This article advances the discussion on how to minimize the use of deception in elite field experimentation and how to mitigate discrimination against vulnerable populations.