Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T12:30:59.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How bureaucratic leadership shapes policy outcomes: partisan politics and affluent citizens’ incomes in the American states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

Daniel Berkowitz  and
George A. Krause Open the ORCID record for George A. Krause [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Berkowitz
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, USA
George A. Krause*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration and Policy, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: gkrause@uga.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We maintain that political institutions’ policy objectives are best met under conditions when they are unified, and also when their administrative leadership is effective. We apply this argument to the understanding of how unified Democratic and Republican governments in the American states have influenced the incomes of affluent citizens. We find that affluent income gains occur under unified Republican state governments when compensation to executive agency heads is sufficiently high. These income gains are notable relative to both divided and unified partisan control of state governments. The evidence highlights the asymmetric role that bureaucratic leadership plays in attaining policy outcomes consistent with political institutions’ policy preferences, while underscoring the limits of electoral institutions to shape policy outcomes of their own accord. Efforts to lower the capacity of the administrative leadership constrain unified political institutions from converting their policy objectives into policy outcomes.

Keywords

American statesbureaucratic leadershipincome distributionpartisan control of governmentpolicy outcomesseparation of powers arrangements
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 305 - 328
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Much earlier (and quite different) versions of this article have been presented at the annual meeting of the State Politics & Policy Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, 15−17 May 2014, Conference in Honor of Norman Schofield, Washington University, St. Louis, Friday, 27 April 2013, the University of Pittsburgh’s Research in American Politics Seminar, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Applied Microeconomics Workshop.

References

Abney, G and Lauth, TP (1986) The Politics of State and City Administration. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D, Robinson, JA and Torvik, R (2013) Why Do Voters Dismantle Checks and Balances? Review of Economic Studies 80, 845–875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, AB and Piketty, T (eds.) (2010) Top Incomes: A Global Perspective. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barrilleaux, C, Holbrook, TM and Langer, L (2002) Electoral Competition, Legislative Balance, and American Welfare State Policy. American Journal of Political Science 46, 415–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, LM (2008) Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, N and Katz, JN (2011) Modeling Dynamics in Time-Series Cross-Section Political Economy Data. Annual Review of Political Science 14, 331–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, WD, Evan, JR, Fording, RC and Hanson, RL (1998) Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States, 1960−1993. American Journal of Political Science 42, 327–348.Google Scholar
Boushey, GT and McGrath, RJ (2017) Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 27, 85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowling, CJ and Wright, DS (1998) Change and Continuity in State Administration: Administrative Leadership across Four Decades. Public Administration Review 58, 429–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, D and Leicht, KT (2008) Party to Inequality: Right Party Power and Income Inequality in Affluent Western Democracies. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 26, 77–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudney, JL, Fernandez, S, Ryu, JE and Wright, DS (2005) Exploring and Explaining Contracting Out: Patterns Among the American States. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 15, 393–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudney, JL and Wright, DS (2010) The “Revolt in Dullsville”: Lessons for Theory, Practice, and Research from the American State Administrators Project, 1964-2008. Public Administration Review 70, 26–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhauser, RV, Feng, S, Jenkins, SP and Larrimore, J (2012) Recent Trends in Top Income Shares in the United States: Reconciling Estimates from March CPS and IRS Tax Return Data. Review of Economics and Statistics 94, 371–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, C-L and Wright, DS (2007) Perceptions of Federal Aid Impacts on State Agencies: Patterns, Trends, and Variations Across the 20th Century. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37, 101–130.Google Scholar
Conlan, TJ (1998) From New Federalism to Devolution: Twenty-Five Years of Intergovernmental Reform. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Dye, TR (1990) American Federalism: Competition Among Governments. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Eisinger, PK (1988) The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State: State and Local Economic Development Policy in the United States. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, DL and O’Halloran, S (1999) Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policymaking Under Separated Powers. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Federalist Papers (1982) The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F (2013) What is Governance? Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 26, 347–368.Google Scholar
Gailmard, S and Patty, JW (2013) Learning While Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, A, Kenworthy, L and Su, Y-S (2010) Income Inequality and Partisan Voting in the United States. Social Science Quarterly 91, 1203–1219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilens, M (2012) Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hacker, JS and Pierson, P (2010) Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Hammond, TH and Knott, JH (1996) Who Controls the Bureaucracy? Presidential Power, Congressional Dominance, Legal Constraints, and Bureaucratic Autonomy in a Model of Institutional Policymaking. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 12, 119–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, JD and Shipan, CR (2002) Deliberate Discretion? The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, JD and McCarty, N (2004) Bureaucratic Capacity, Delegation, and Political Reform. American Political Science Review 98, 481–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Im, KS, Pesaran, MH and Kim, Y (2003) Testing for Unit Roots in Heterogeneous Panels. Journal of Econometrics 115, 53–74.Google Scholar
Kaufman, H (1981) The Administrative Behavior of Federal Bureau Chiefs. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Kelleher, CA and Yackee, SW (2009) A Political Consequence of Contracting: Organized Interests and State Agency Decision Making. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 19, 579–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, NJ and Witko, C (2012) Federalism and American Inequality. Journal of Politics 74, 414–426.Google Scholar
Kenworthy, L and Pontusson, J (2005) Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries. Perspectives on Politics 3, 449–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, GA and Woods, ND (2014) Policy Delegation, Comparative Institutional Capacity, and Administrative Politics in the American States. In Haider-Markel DP (ed.), Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government. New York: Oxford University Press, 363–396.Google Scholar
Langer, L (2001) The Consequences of State Economic Development Strategies on Income Distribution in the American States, 1976-1994. American Politics Research 29, 392–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leigh, A (2007) “How Closely Do Top Income Shares Track Other Measures of Inequality? Economic Journal 117(524): F619–F633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, NE (1949) Power and Administration. Public Administration Review 9, 257–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowery, A (2012) Costs Seen in Income Inequality. New York Times, 17 October. Section, Page: B1, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/business/economy/income-inequality-may-take-toll-on-growth.html (accessed 19 October 2012).Google Scholar
Lowery, DC and Gray, V (2001) The Institutionalization of State Communities of Organized Interests. Political Research Quarterly 54, 265–284.Google Scholar
Meltzer, AH and Richard, SF (1981) A Rational Theory of the Size of Government. Journal of Political Economy 89, 914–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikesell, J (2007) Changing State Capacity and Tax Effort in an Era of Devolving Government, 1981−2003. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37, 532–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, GJ and Whitford, AB (2016) Above Politics: Bureaucratic Discretion and Credible Commitment. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moncrief, G and Squire, P (2013) Why States Matter? An Introduction to State Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
National Association of State Personnel Executives (2013) Total Rewards: Preparing to Pay the Next Generation of State Government Workers, http://www.naspe.net/assets/docs/Research-and-Publications/HR/wp_total%20rewards.pdf (accessed 19 January 2018).Google Scholar
National Association of State Personnel Executives (2016) NASPE 2016 Top Five Issues Panel Discussion, http://www.naspe.net/assets/docs/top5/2016%20white%20paper.pdf (accessed 19 January 2018).Google Scholar
Persson, T, Roland, G and Tabellini, G (1997) Separation of Powers and Political Accountability. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 1163–1202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, BG and Pierre, J (1998) Governance Without Governing? Rethinking Public Administration. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 2, 223–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piketty, T and Saez, E (2003) Income Inequality in the United States, 1913− 1998. Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piketty, T and Saez, E (2006) The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective. American Economic Review 96, 200–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, WR, Rogers, CL and Skidmore, M (2011) On Estimating Marginal Tax Rates for U.S. States. National Tax Journal 64, 59–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, H (2002) Public Finance, 6th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin.Google Scholar
Saez, E, Slemrod, J and Giertz, SH (2012) The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review. Journal of Economic Literature 50, 3–50.Google Scholar
Salamon, LM (ed.) (2002) The Tools of Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scheve, K and Stasavage, D (2009) Institutions, Partisanship, and Inequality in the Long Run. World Politics 61, 215–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, SK, Jacoby, WG and Coggburn, JD (1997) The Structure of Bureaucratic Decision in the American States. Public Administration Review 57, 240–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seifter, M (2017) Gubernatorial Administration. Harvard Law Review 131, 483–542.Google Scholar
Seifter, M (2018) Further from the People? The Puzzle of State Administration. NYU Law Review 93, 107–174.Google Scholar
Sommeiller, E and Price, M (2014) The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2011. Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) Report, http://www.epi.org/publication/unequal-states/ (accessed 13 February 2014).Google Scholar
Stark, KJ (2010) Rich States, Poor States: Assessing the Design and Effect of a U.S. Fiscal Equalization Regime. Tax Law Review 63, 957–1008.Google Scholar
Teodoro, MP (2011) Bureaucratic Ambition: Careers, Motives, and the Innovative Administrator. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Terry, LD (2005) The Thinning of Administrative Institutions in the Hollow State. Administration & Society 37, 426–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Texas State Auditor’s Office (John Keel, CPA, State Auditor) (2014) An Audit Report on The Texas Enterprise Fund at the Office of the Governor. SAO Report No. 15-003, https://www.sao.texas.gov/reports/main/15-003.pdf (accessed 20 February 2018).Google Scholar
US Government Accountability Office (2010) State and Local Governments: Fiscal Pressures Could Have Implications for Future Delivery of Intergovernmental Programs. Report to the Ranking Member, Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives. Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office.Google Scholar
Volden, C (2002) A Formal Model of the Politics of Delegation in the Separation of Powers System. American Journal of Political Science 46, 111–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volscho, TW and Kelly, NJ (2012) The Rise of the Super−Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949−2008. American Sociological Review 77, 679–699.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Berkowitz and Krause Dataset

Dataset

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/GCXFYS
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Berkowitz and Krause supplementary material

Berkowitz and Krause supplementary material 1

Download Berkowitz and Krause supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 426.7 KB