DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.13382 ISSN: 0038-4941
Bad times keep us together: Policy priorities and economic shocks
Christine S. Lipsmeyer, Andrew Q. Philips, Amanda Rutherford, Guy D. Whitten- General Social Sciences
Abstract
Objective
We analyze how economic shocks affect the partisan nature of budgetary trade‐offs and use data from the U.S. Census Annual Survey of Government Finance to illustrate it.
Methods
We propose a compositional approach to model trade‐offs among 10 budgetary categories across both time and space in U.S. states.
Results
We find support for the notion that partisanship drives the allocation of budgetary expenditures. However, during times of negative economic shocks, either within a state or in neighboring states, Democratic and Republican governors have a similar budgetary response.
Conclusions
The results show the effects of economic and political shifts, as well as the implications of spillovers from other states, on partisan decisions about trade‐offs in government budgets.