Robert C. Lowry

Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits: Evidence from the States

Does partisan control of American state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels? Does divided control affect the governments ability to make hard decisions? Do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter? Using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the American states from 1968 to 1987, we conclude that (1) aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under Democrats and Republicans, the net result being that Democrats target spending (and taxes) to higher shares of state-level personal income; (2) divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits, particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature; and (3) unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year (outside the South) have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions.

Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States

Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, which differ for each party. Net of these expectations, Republican gubernatorial candidates lose votes if their party is responsible for unanticipated increases in the size of the state budget; Democrats do not and, indeed, may be rewarded for small increases. Independent of this, the incumbent governors party is punished in legislative elections for failing to maintain fiscal balance. Taken together, these results show how electoral accountability for fiscal policy outcomes is strong but highly contingent on a complex configuration of party labels, partisan control, expectations, and institutions.

A Dynamic Model of State Budget Outcomes Under Divided Partisan Government

This article analyzes the politics of fiscal adjustment in a bicameral system when parties prefer different scales of taxes and public spending. Data from 33 non-southern American states for the years 1952-1995 show that Democrats nearly everywhere target a larger share of state incomes for the public budget than Republicans, though exact party positions vary from state to state. Republicans react more strongly to budget surpluses by reducing revenues than do Democrats. Unified governments adjust faster than divided ones. A party having unified control can shift fiscal scale one-quarter to one-third of the way toward its ideal share of income within two years. When each party controls a different branch of government, the legislative party shifts fiscal scale in its desired direction; but when each party controls one legislative chamber, there is a smaller shift in the direction preferred by the governors party.

Governmental structure, trustee selection, and public university prices and spending: Multiple means to similar ends

estimate the effects of multiple instruments for exercising political control over public university prices and spending. I find that public universities located in states with governmental structures that enhance political control and universities whose trustees are selected by nonacademic stakeholders charge significantly lower prices than universities located in states with decentralized systems

The effects of state political interests and campus outputs on public university revenues

Abstract Using data for 428 individual campuses in all 50 states, I show that state government funding and tuition and fee revenues at public universities depend on both political and economic factors. State government funding varies depending on the relative size of various interest groups in each state, as well as the ability of public universities to present a united front when dealing with state government. Differences in state government funding at specific campuses reflect differences in the net political benefits to political officials from the supply of instruction, academic research and public service. Net tuition and fee revenues are higher at campuses that receive less state government funding, but also higher in states where public universities have more financial autonomy. The price of attending college thus depends in part on whether the relevant decision makers are state government officials or university administrators.

Organized Interests and the Politics of Federal Discretionary Grants

Despite their importance in theories of distributive spending, interest groups and other private and public organizations are largely absent from empirical research on the allocation of federal spending to subnational jurisdictions. We find that organized interests are significant determinants of the allocation of federal discretionary grants to states for 1991 through 1998 across seven policy areas. In contrast, we find only meager effects for supply-side variables suggested by the literature. We conjecture that supply-side effects are highly contingent on political circumstances and the type of spending being analyzed.

Transparency and Accountability: Empirical Results for US States

Recent formal models of accountability allow us to make different conditional predictions about how transparency affects voters’ willingness to re-elect incumbents and acceptance of higher taxes. We review two models and investigate empirical implications derived from or related to them, using panel data from 1972—2000 for U.S. state budget process transparency, gubernatorial elections, and tax increases in a small structural model. We do not find that budget transparency has a direct effect on incumbent retention, but we do find clear evidence that increased transparency dampens the negative effect of tax increases on retention of incumbent governors. Independent of this, we also find that increased transparency leads to greater fiscal scale. We suggest some possible directions for future models based on our results.

Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups

I test the hypothesis that religious affiliation is an empirical measure of tastes and beliefs that affect the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups. The number of adherents to Judeo-Christian denominations per household has a significant, negative effect on state membership rates for nine groups advocating a preservationist approach to environmental policy, particularly in states with many Catholics, Baptists and Mormons. Religious affiliation has a marginally significant, positive effect on membership rates for two sportsmen groups advocating private stewardship. These results suggest that religious affiliation should also be a significant determinant of constituent preferences for environmental policies.

The political economy of public universities in the United States: A review essay

Scholars of state politics and policy have devoted little attention to the public universities where so many of them work. Public higher education is organized at the state level, and its funding and governance have been debated at length in many states in recent years. Moreover, these universities provide opportunities for contributions to a variety of theoretically-grounded research, including the decision to make or buy public services, principal-agent issues and institutional arrangements for governance, the politics of institutional reform, the determinants of government appropriations and budgetary trade-offs, and internal decisionmaking in state-owned enterprises, public bureaucracies, and nonprofit organizations. Research on these issues could not only generate insights relevant to many types of institutions and public services but also contribute to ongoing policy debates over relations between state governments and higher education.

Foundation Patronage toward Citizen Groups and Think Tanks: Who Get Grants?

Private foundations are important patrons for nonprofit organizations engaged in research, education, and policy advocacy, but little is known about the allocation of grants to specific organizations. Company-sponsored foundations that fund environmental citizen groups and think tanks seek to purchase good will, while many independent foundations fund specific programs. Given foundation objectives, the allocation of grants depends on recipient organization program activities, governance structure, and mode of operation. Interest organization entrepreneurs can manipulate these variables to create market niches. Stable niches may in turn limit the flexibility of incumbent organizations and the funding sources available for new organizations.