Party, Political Liberalism, and Redistribution

Abstract

Scholars have devoted substantial effort to studying the conditions under which political party control affects public policy. One among several advantages for assessing party-policy impacts at the subnational level in the American federal system is the existence of a well-known and easily quantifiable decision by the 50 state governments on an important redistributive policy change, the amount of aid each state "guarantees" its "families with dependent children." Earlier efforts at establishing the effects of party on redistributive policy in the American states have been mixed. The authors suggest that the conditions for party impact can best be represented as the interaction of party, liberal/conservative party ideology, and the closeness or competitiveness of the parties. Given existing theoretical arguments in the literature, the authors model these interactions as characterizing either the party in control or the party system as a whole. The authors test for which of the models is superior in predicting changes in welfare policies and find, on balance, the systemic model is superior to the control model.