Party Control and Policy Responsiveness in the American States, 2011-2020

• In Event: Elites and Public Opinion

Abstract

A healthy democracy is one in which there is a meaningful connection between public opinion and public policy. When the public moves to the left or right, public policy should respond accordingly. This should be especially true at the subnational level, where government is supposed to be "closer to the people." While prominent scholarship shows evidence of a robust over-time "statehouse democracy" in the United States, there has been surprisingly little exploration into whether this holds in an era of hyper-partisanship, weakened campaign finance laws, and eroding norms against egregious gerrymandering. Using data on state-level public opinion and public policy in the domain of economics from 2011-2020, I find evidence of a stark partisan asymmetry in policy responsiveness. State governments where the Democratic Party (Republican Party) holds more power are more (less) likely to shift economic policy to bring it more in line with changes in mass opinion. I attribute these findings to several factors, including the Republican Party's electoral incentives to deemphasize economic issues, the proliferation of well-funded right-wing interest groups, a clear advantage in the ability to effectively gerrymander, and the GOP's general anti-democracy turn in recent years. In short, greater Republican Party control of statehouses is associated with a significantly weaker link between public opinion and public policy.

Author

• David Macdonald, University of Florida