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U . S . State Governments Are Not L eviathans: Evidence from the Economic Freedom Index
Author(s) -
Campbell Noel D.,
Mitchell David T.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00804.x
Subject(s) - legislature , politics , government (linguistics) , economics , state (computer science) , index (typography) , agency (philosophy) , instrumental variable , power (physics) , panel data , public economics , political economy , demographic economics , political science , econometrics , sociology , computer science , law , social science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , world wide web
Objective Does increasing a political party's power lead to L eviathan state governments? The evidence is mixed. We use the E conomic F reedom of N orth A merica ( EFNA ) Index to measure governmental activity to study the impact of political parties on government outcomes. Methods We employ instrumental‐variable, panel data methods to regress states’ EFNA scores on median voter and differentiated‐party variables. Results Party effects are negligible, but a simple median voter explanation emerges. Conclusion As political power is consolidated in either party, economic freedom increases. This is consistent with a model wherein the median voter has effective agency control with positive monitoring costs and prefers a particular level of so‐called economic freedom. These results are inconsistent with L eviathan models of state legislatures.