Scholars show a 鈥渄irect link鈥� from the 1920s to the early 1960s between the race, class, and immigration status of constituents and their district鈥檚 share of state funds.
In 1936, when the influential American political scientist Harold Laswell published his seminal work , he couldn鈥檛 have foreseen that the book鈥檚 title would soon become a standard, lay definition of politics, one that endures to this day.
In the news
The references Gamm and Kousser鈥檚 latest study in a story on how state politics often cleave along the same fault lines as national politics: blue versus red, big city versus rural districts.
Given the importance of race, class, and immigration status in shaping American politics, two political scientists鈥� at the 人妻少妇专区 and at the 鈥攚ondered how demographic characteristics might affect state spending. Has state spending across constituencies reflected the same biases that have been shown to shape voting patterns, representation, and policymaking?
To answer that question, Gamm鈥攁n expert on Congress, state legislatures,聽, and modern party politics鈥攁nd Kousser鈥攁 specialist on term limits, voting reforms, and state politics鈥攖ook the long view, diving into historical archives and collecting data from six states for 1921, 1941, and 1961. The researchers picked this time frame to incorporate the sweeping changes in American society and government brought first by the New Deal and then the Second World War. Their results, titled 鈥�,鈥� are published in Legislative Studies Quarterly.
As the title suggests, the duo found 鈥�clear evidence of bias鈥� and discovered that race, class, and immigration status played important roles in how and where state legislatures spent money. Examining historical budget and spending patterns from the state legislatures in California, Illinois, Montana, New York, Vermont, and Virginia鈥攕tates selected to encompass the widest possible variety 鈥渋n their region, party systems, size, level of urban development, and in their demography鈥濃�攖he authors discovered that certain demographic factors had a direct effect on how much a state spent on its constituents. Districts with more immigrants or larger numbers of nonwhite residents got significantly less money, while districts dominated by US-born, white Anglo constituents received more state dollars.
鈥淲e demonstrate that there is a strong and persistent bias in who gets what based on the demographics of constituents,鈥� Gamm and Kousser write.
The researchers examined 2,517 legislative districts, along with their legislators and constituent populations, to explain spending patterns. They controlled for a host of factors, across two categories, including non-demographic features of the districts and characteristics of the individual legislators.
鈥淟egislators themselves have been the focus in most studies of distributive politics, as scholars have examined the advantages accruing to those with more seniority, those chairing committees, and those in the majority party,鈥� Gamm and Kousser write. But recent scholarship, they note, find the effect of these factors 鈥渜uite modest.鈥�
The significance of the New Deal and post-World War II period
There鈥檚 a reason that Gamm and Kousser stopped their historical analysis at 1961. It鈥檚 likely the same reason previous scholars have not explored the relationship between district-level spending and demographics: to isolate and test a single explanatory factor in a complex political system encompassing 48 to 50 states, over any period of time, is daunting. To develop a database of every dollar in state spending targeting a specific district鈥攁s was necessary for the study鈥攊nvolved hand coding of entire state budgets, line by line, to isolate district-level spending. Some budgets took a full year to code.
Given those constraints, Gamm and Kousser were not able to collect and analyze data that would have shed light on the decades since, taking us up to the current moment when racial resentment, wealth inequality, and nativist fears have featured especially prominently in American politics.
But the period they studied offers a sound basis for speculation. The New Deal brought a period of rapid growth of public spending of all sorts鈥攁 trend that accelerated in the post-World War II period. Expectations about the role of government changed dramatically, and the terms were set for a debate that persists to this day over who should receive public funds.
So while the data cannot speak directly to the current era, the scholars conclude, 鈥渨e speculate that the patterns of discrimination in state spending that we uncovered have persisted to the present day, given the evidence of continuing discrimination in other realms of American life.鈥�
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