Essays on Rules and Institutions Affecting State Policy Outcomes
Open AccessThis dissertation focuses on the forces that shape politics and policymaking across the fifty states, examining how varying institutional designs of legislative chambers affects policy outcomes at the state level. First, I explore whether and how the design of state legislative budget offices matters. After identifying the creation of every state-level budget office, I leverage causal statistical methods to assess their influence on a state's budgetary standing. Based on a half-century of data, I find that the design of state budgetary institutions does not matter: States that create nonpartisan offices to advise legislative majorities have similar budgetary surpluses relative to states supported by partisan fiscal offices.Second, I explore whether and how state legislative institutions that structure bicameral negotiations across state assemblies influence the shape of policy outcomes. I distill Congressional theories of legislative organization to the state legislative context and hypothesize that states that afford minority parties parliamentary rights in resolving bicameral disagreements limit the influence of majority parties on policy outcomes. Utilizing an original data set of over 200,000 bills and 20,000 bicameral conference committees formed to negotiate cameral differences, I find evidence for this propositionin numerous circumstances. When the minority party has conferee appointing rights, conference delegations are closer ideologically to the chamber median than the majority party. Similarly, majority parties are more likely to abstain from conferencing when the minority can appoint conference members. Overall, the interaction of state legislative rules and partisan dynamics alters the composition and likelihood of conference negotiations, shaping the form of legislative deal making in a systematic fashion.
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