Government Expenditures and Public Services in the American States

Sharkansky, Ira

doi:10.2307/1953407

Cited by 54 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…35. Sharkansky [46] and other researchers [47][48][49] have investigated the expenditure-service connection, but the evidence has been less than convincing. Their results varied from showing a significant positive relation to showing no statistical significance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does State Aid Stimulate Public Library Expenditures? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Enhancement Aid Program

Stine

2006

The Library Quarterly

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does State Aid Stimulate Public Library Expenditures? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Enhancement Aid Program

Stine

2006

The Library Quarterly

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“…74 choices are translated into corresponding levels of outcomes. On the contrary, as has been shown by studies of Western systems, the distribution of expenditures does not necessarily lead to the same provision of goods and services (Sharkansky, 1967). Thus I want to stress that I draw no inferences here from the budgetary data to the actual distribution of material benefits among the Soviet republics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

Policy Choices and Regional Equality among the Soviet Republics

Bielasiak

1980

Am Polit Sci Rev

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While socioeconomic equality and maximum economic growth have been the proclaimed aims of Soviet leaders, the simultaneous implementation of these goals is difficult. Analysis of budgets reveals that expenditures in economic categories vary significantly across Soviet republics, and decline little over time. The republics are substantially more equal in socio-cultural expenditures, and are becoming even more so with time. The level of urbanization accounts fora large share of the variance in the social budget but not the economic one. Policy decisions concerning the latter are likely subject to a process involving a variety of political, military and socioeconomic considerations that transcend both the equality and efficiency criteria. In contrast, the increasing parity among Soviet republics in the socio-cultural budget is closely related to the increasing urbanization of the republics at the lower end of the development scale. It appears that increasing regional equality in the Soviet Union may be achieved primarily through improvements in social opportunities, and not by means of direct redistribution of economic resources.

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“…Sharkansky (1967) later refined Elazar's original categorical distinctions. He argues that cultural differences form a continuum ranging from moralist to traditionalist orientations, with individualistic cultures falling in between the two extremes.…”

Section: Political Culture and Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Influences on State Policy Priorities: The Interplay of Public Opinion and Interest Groups

Schneider

Jacoby

2006

Public Opinion in State Politics

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Political scientists generally believe that public opinion affects public policy within the American states. While such a connection may seem obvious, firm empirical evidence for the existence of this relationship has only been presented quite recently. Early studies of state policymaking emphasized economic factors as the predominant determinants of governmental activity (Dawson and Robinson 1963;Dye 1966;Sharkansky and Hofferbert 1969). Once variables like per capita income, gross state product, and employment levels were taken into account, political characteristics like party composition of state legislatures, gubernatorial partisanship, and political culture seemed to have no effect. These results were replicated a number of times and widely accepted by state politics scholars (Hofferbert 1974).Of course, political scientists were extremely uncomfortable about the sizable body of empirical evidence that showed politics was irrelevant to governmental decision-making within the states. Therefore, research continued on this topic with dogged determination to show otherwise. The major breakthrough occurred with the pioneering work by Wright, Erikson, and McIver (1985). They used survey data, aggregated to the state level, in order to develop measures of citizen partisanship and ideology within each state. They provide compelling evidence that these measures are effective gauges of mass orientations, and, more important, they show that these aspects of public opinion have a strong influence on state policy liberalism.Indeed, once public opinion is taken into account, economic factors play only a secondary role as determinants of policy (Erikson, Wright, McIver 1989 We wholeheartedly agree that the recent work represents a highly significant step to understanding the state policymaking process. But, we also believe that further work is necessary in at least two directions. First, it is important to identify where and how public opinion impinges upon the policymaking process. Second, the specification of influences on policies must be expanded to incorporate another set of critical actors in the political process-interest groups.This paper constitutes a first step toward those objectives. MEASURING STATE POLICYA perusal of the literature reveals that there are three dominant approaches to measuring public policy within the states. Many researchers use program expenditures. Another set of scholars relies upon specific policy adoptions. A third group employs composite variables constructed from multiple indicators. We believe that all of these approaches are problematic, for different reasons. Previous ApproachesFirst, let us consider the research that use policy expenditures as the dependent variable.Studies that take this approach generally focus on spending (usually adjusted by state population, Despite their ubiquity in the field, there is a serious drawback to the use of policy expenditures. Spending within any given policy area is invariably affected by state spending across other policies, which are not under...

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Government Expenditures and Public Services in the American States

Cited by 54 publications

References 4 publications

Does State Aid Stimulate Public Library Expenditures? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Enhancement Aid Program

Does State Aid Stimulate Public Library Expenditures? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Enhancement Aid Program

Policy Choices and Regional Equality among the Soviet Republics

Citizen Influences on State Policy Priorities: The Interplay of Public Opinion and Interest Groups

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