Party Control and Policy Change

Abstract

A major unexamined independent variable in the field of American state budgetary analysis is political party control. By moving to a pooled, longitudinal design (thirty-four states over nine biennia), I test for the effects of variations in political party control with changes in the redistribution ratio (Fry and Winters, 1970). As the ratio reflects policies indulging or depriving lower income classes, I hypothesize that the Democratic party, dependent in part on the electoral support of those income classes, will produce positive redistributional change. While political party control affects the first difference of redistribution, the biennial level of redistribution is expected to reflect long-term economic variables of wealth and need, and the absolute value of the first difference, a measure of relevant budgetary churning, will positively correlate with measures of formal gubernatorial power. While there is evidence that the latter two hypotheses are correct, there is no relationship between political party control and changes in the redistributive policies of the thirty-four northern American, politically competitive states.