Saundra K. Schneider

Variability in State Policy Priorities: An Empirical Analysis

This article examines variability in policy priorities across the American states; that is, the ways that state governments allocate resources to meet societal needs. Specifically, our analysis uses 1992 data on state program expenditures to produce a comprehensive geometric representation- or model-of state policy priorities for that year. This model is parsimonious, powerful, and substantively meaningful. The structure of state policy priorities is manifested as a sharp contrast between programs that deliver particularized benefits and those that supply collective goods. Furthermore, we show that policy priorities are largely determined by public opinion and interest group activity within the respective states. Therefore, our analysis not only operationalizes successfully a critical aspect of the policy process; it also makes a useful contribution to the study of state politics.

The Quality of Management and Government Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the American States

Government performance is an enduring concern for students of public management, public administration, and political science. Governments administrative arrangements and managerial behavior can profoundly influence programmatic content, activities, and outcomes; therefore, considering public managements effects is necessary for a true understanding of public policy and government performance. This article uses data from the Maxwell Schools Government Performance Project to examine the relationship between state governments’ managerial capacity and a measure of government performance (specifically, state policy priorities). We find that state management capacity has direct effects on state policy commitments: States possessing higher levels of management capacity tend to favor programmatic areas that distribute societal benefits widely (that is, collective benefits) as opposed to narrowly (that is, particularized benefits). Our analysis demonstrates that public interest group activity, government ideology, and citizen ideology each have significant, predictable effects on state policy commitments. Thus, our findings place managerial capacity alongside other more commonly studied state characteristics as an important influence on government activities.

The Structure of Bureaucratic Decisions in the American States

Bureaucrats have a significant impact on the ways that governmental policies impinge on American citizens. This is particularly true at the state level. Administrators in state agencies have wide latitude to make vital decisions in important public programs. And yet, surprisingly little is known about this process. The present analysis will address this topic by focusing on the structure of bureaucratic initiatives in state Medicaid policies. We believe that doing so has several important advantages. Substantively, our focus on the structure inherent in bureaucratic decisions reveals a great deal about the nature of administrative policy making in social program developments at the state level. Methodologically our analysis produces an empirical measure of bureaucratic policy outputs, which can be used as an analytic variable in other research efforts. Altogether the information obtained in this analysis provides new insights about the role of administrators in the American policy process. Background In this study, we will examine state adoptions of Medicaid optional health care services. The federal government and state legislators establish the general parameters for the Medicaid program (Coughlin, Ku, and Holahan, 1994). But, state-level bureaucrats make important decisions that determine the exact configuration of services to be offered within each state (Bovbjerg and Holahan, 1982; Congressional Research Service, 1993; Schneider and Jacoby, 1996). Hence, many of the differences that exist across state Medicaid programs are due to administrative initiatives rather than to state legislative statutes or federal regulations (Davison, 1980). The objective of this article is to determine whether there is an underlying structure among these interstate differences. If such a structure does exist, then it should be useful for discerning the criteria that Medicaid bureaucrats have in mind when they make administrative decisions. Given the importance of state bureaucracies in the Medicaid policy making process, it is somewhat surprising that so little is known about how they operate. There has been virtually no research conducted on this topic so we do not know whether there is any pattern or structure to bureaucratic decisions. Previous empirical analyses have focused on other aspects of the Medicaid program, such as state expenditures and assessments of program intention, content, and/or scope (Hanson, 1984; Holahan and Cohen, 1986; Barrilleaux and Miller, 1988; Schneider, 1988; Buchanan, Cappelleri, and Ohsfeldt, 1991). Those few studies that have focused directly on administrative initiatives in the Medicaid program have tended to be speculative and interpretive (Lemov, 1991; Hovrath, 1992). They generally conclude that there is no discernible pattern among state bureaucratic policy adoptions. Instead, they argue that the range of available services is too wide to be analyzed or summarized in any comprehensible form (Davison, 1980; McDonough, 1992). We emphatically disagree with the preceding conclusion and believe that there is an underlying structure to bureaucratic decisions in state Medicaid programs. We hypothesize a pattern of bureaucratic activity based upon the degree of difficulty involved in providing various health care services. State administrators would begin by adopting easy options; only after doing so would they move on to implement more difficult services. The exact nature of the difficulty is an empirical matter, to be determined as pa-rt of the analysis. It could be based upon the costs of the services, the size of the clientele groups for the various services, or the level of political controversy surrounding different health care options. In a-nv case, a cumulative pattern should arise because states adopt easier services before proceeding to more difficult options. Most states are willing to provide a set of minimal health care services while others are willing to bear greater burdens. …

A Culture of Dependence? The Relationship Between Public Assistance and Public Opinion

In the United States it is widely believed that public assistance may have harmful effects on the social and political orientations of those who receive it. Certain kinds of government support – particularly welfare – may foster a ‘culture of dependence’ comprising values and beliefs that are different from, and perhaps contrary to, the predominant American political culture. We examine the relationship between government assistance and public opinion using survey data taken from the 1992 CPS National Election Study. Our empirical results show that welfare benefits do have some effect on issue attitudes. But recipients of public aid are virtually identical to non-recipients in terms of their core values, reactions to the political system and general beliefs about American society. There is no evidence that a distinctive ‘culture of dependence’ has developed among people who rely on financial support from the federal government.

Influences on State Professional Licensure Policy.

Professional licensure is a vital element of a states policy-making activity. The regulation of professions and occupations is one of the primary ways that the states affect the everyday lives of their citizens. However, little is really known about the activities of the state licensing systems which perform these regulatory functions. This study examines factors that influence decision making on state professional licensure boards. The analysis is based on data from the state of Missouri, although the results may generalize to other states as well. The results show that different sets of factors influence different aspects of board policy making. This has important implications for recent regulatory reforms aimed at these licensure boards.

Reconsidering the Linkage between Public Assistance and Public Opinion in the American Welfare State

doubt on the existence of a widespread ‘culture of dependence’, we do show that programme beneficiaries exhibit self-interested support for government policies that provide assistance to needy segments of the population. However, our analysis – like most others on this topic – assumes that welfare participation affects opinions and not vice versa. This is problematic because there are theoretical reasons to believe that influences flow in the opposite direction, as well. Therefore, some important questions remain to be answered: is it really the case that welfare participation, itself, shapes the outlook of programme beneficiaries? Or do political attitudes affect reliance on public assistance in the first place? In this Research Note, we examine the underlying structure of the relationship between welfare participation and attitudes towards government activity. Our analysis uses the 1992 Center for Political Studies (CPS) National Election Study, the same dataset employed in the earlier article. 2 But, we test a statistical model that allows for reciprocal influences between welfare and public opinion. The empirical results reinforce the earlier conclusion that welfare participation has an impact on mass attitudes. Conversely, political attitudes have no effect on whether citizens use public aid. Mirroring our earlier work, 3 we find that people who rely on governmental assistance take rational, self-interested positions on the public policy issues which operate to their own direct benefit.

Institutional Characteristics and State Policy Priorities The Impact of Legislatures and Governors

This article examines how the institutional characteristics of state legislatures and governors affect state policy priorities. We argue that differences in the nature of their respective constituencies lead legislators to press for particularized benefits while governors favor collective goods. Empirical analysis of state-level data from 1982 through 2011 confirms that this is the case. The organizational arrangements of the two branches of government have an impact that is usually greater than that of state public opinion but generally less than that of state interest groups. The results from this analysis are important because they show that institutional structure has systematic effects that are independent of ideology, partisanship, and the other factors that are known to shape state policy making.

Governmental Response to Disasters: Key Attributes, Expectations, and Implications

This chapter examines the role of governmental institutions during disaster situations. It describes the political and policy context in which governments become involved in disasters, identifying key attributes of the governmental approach to disasters. The importance of the intergovernmental framework underlying a governmental response system is highlighted along with the possibility that different intergovernmental structures can be established and utilized. Regardless of the official arrangement of organizations and personnel in a response system, it is clear that intergovernmental processes have a significant impact on the performance of disaster response systems. And, in turn, crisis response efforts can have broader repercussions, shaping more general assessments of governmental performance in contemporary societies.