Welcome to the
research section. Hopefully you’ll find
something of interest here. The way to
keep a research program going is to have a burning desire to answer a
particular question. For me, the
question of what to pursue was perfectly stated by Douglas A. Hibbs when he
said: “The real winners of elections are perhaps best determined by examining
the policy consequences of partisan change rather than by simply tallying the
votes” (“Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy,” American Political
Science Review, Vol. 71, No. 4, December, 1977, p. 1487 – the second most
cited article in the history of the APSR). I would be gratified if the work below has
made even the smallest contribution to this topic. You can download any of the completed
articles. You can also download both the
dataset and variable list for all the published articles except one. Please contact me at chris.dennis@csulb.edu with questions
or comments. If you would like a break from “academic”
material you might enjoy seeing beautiful ocean scenes. If so, go to the “Gallery” section (click here).
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ARTICLES |
Christopher Dennis
(with Thomas J. Hayes, Stavros Papadopoulos and Amy Widestrom).
2021. “The Political Response to Increasing Income Inequality: The Case of
State Wage Policies Since 1968,” currently on review at Social Science
Journal. If you would like a copy
please contact me at: chris.dennis@csulb.edu.
This study examines changes in three
important state wage policies over the 1968 – 2018 period: minimum wage laws,
prevailing wage laws, and right-to-work laws.
In 1968 the federal minimum wage was at its highest point ($11.55 in
2018 dollars) and this was a period of Republican Party ascendence in presidential
elections and unified control of state governments. Our findings show that unified Republican
control of state government resulted in the declining inflation adjusted value
of state minimum wages, the repeal of prevailing wage laws, and the adoption of
right-to-work laws. While unified
Democratic control of state governments and public opinion mitigated these
effects to some degree, the impact of unified Republican control resulted in
state wage policy that was much more inegalitarian in 2018 than in 1968.
Christopher Dennis
(with Amy Widestrom and Thomas J. Hayes). 2018. “The Effect of Political Parties on the Distribution of
Income in the American States: 1917–2011,” Social Science Quarterly,
Vol. 99, No. 3, pp. 895-914.
This article examines the effects of
partisan control of government on income distribution within the United States.
Methods. Using newly available data we estimate the effects of unified
Democratic and Republican Party control at the state and national levels on the
share of income going to the top 1 percent of income earners, by state, between
1917 and 2011. We find that unified
party control at the state level has minimal impact on income going to the top
1 percent of income earners within the states, but that unified party control
at the federal level does have an effect. Moreover, we find that over the long
term, unified Democratic control at the federal level leads to less income
going to the top 1 percent, while unified Republican control increases income
going to top earners. Conclusions. Despite the increased focus on federalism
and state policy in studies of income inequality, our findings suggest that
federal-level political factors are important for understanding the share of
income going to the top income earners in the United States, particularly in
the contemporary era.
Christopher Dennis (with Thomas J. Hayes). 2014. “State Adoption of Tax
Policy: New Data and New Insights,” American
Politics Research, Vol. 42, No. 6, pp. 929-955.
This
article examines the factors that influence two important areas of state tax
policy—the adoption of an income tax as well as whether a state permits
deducting federal income taxes against state individual income taxes. We focus
on a factor that has largely been unexplored, the flow of income going to the
Top 1% of earners. Using data from two
different time periods (1916-1937 & 1960-2003), we find that the share of
income received by the richest 1% of taxpayers corresponds with both the
likelihood states will adopt an income tax as well as whether states allow
deductions of federal income tax against state individual income taxes.
Dataset 1 Dataset 2 Variable List
Christopher Dennis
(with Marshall H. Medoff) 2014. “Another Critical
Review of New’s Reanalysis of Antiabortion
Legislation, State Politics & Policy
Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 269-276.
In
New’s response to our article he concedes that (1)
his dataset had over 150 misclassification errors, (2) used an incorrect weight
to correct for heteroscedasticity, (3) did not control for interstate travel by
women to an out-of-state abortion provider, and (4) some of his empirical
results are numerically implausible. Unfortunately, in New’s
reanalysis he makes many of the same errors as in his original article.
Ironically, New’s empirical evidence in Table 3 of
his reassessment article corroborates our findings that informed consent laws
(all statistically insignificant in his Table 3) had no measurable impact on
the abortion rate of all women of childbearing age, adult women or teen minors
over the period 1985- 2005. Moreover, New fails to acknowledge that he has a
conflict of interest. He is an adjunct scholar with the self-proclaimed
antiabortion Charlotte Lozier Institute. In addition, on September 15, 2012 at
the annual meeting of Value Voters sponsored by the antiabortion Family
Research Council, he told an audience of social conservatives that to stop
abortions they should support legislation in states that would lengthen the
waiting period to have an abortion to nine months (audio available).
Christopher Dennis
(with Marshall H. Medoff) 2014. “A Critical
Reexamination of the Effect of Antiabortion Legislation in the Post-Casey Era,”
State Politics & Policy Quarterly,
Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 207-227.
Michael
J. New, in a recent article in this journal, argues that a major reason for the
decline in the incidence of abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision was the increased
number of antiabortion laws—parental involvement laws and informed consent
laws—enacted at the state level. However, New’s
analysis contained critical data, measurement, methodological and estimation
errors. This article details all the errors and then reexamines the effect of
restrictive state abortion laws on the incidence of abortion over the period
1985–2005. The empirical results find little evidence that the decline in the
number of abortions performed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision was due to the
increase in the number of informed consent and parental involvement laws
enacted.
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One of the most discussed
features of the 2010 election has been the impact of The Tea Party. At a time when the current president is
thought by many voters to have pursued a “big government” philosophy and the
state of California has one of the highest unemployment rates in a nation in
the midst of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, the political
environment of the state should be ripe for a movement such as the Tea Party,
whose concerns are deficit reduction, reduction of wasteful spending, and
shrinking the size of government, as opposed to social issues. Our results from both partisan voting and
ballot initiatives show that broad political trends in the U.S. and in the
state of California have aligned to create Democratic Party dominance in the
state and that there is an increasing relationship between socioeconomic
factors, specifically education, and political behavior in California
elections. This raises important issues
for the Democratic Party, however.
First, the Democratic Party has greatly strengthened its position in California
because of the strong support it receives from minority groups, especially
Latinos and African-Americans, and the greater success it is having with more
highly educated. The only apparent
“threat” to the dominance of this coalition would be if Latinos and
African-Americans, who tend to be less tolerant of divergent lifestyles (e.g.,
gay rights and abortion), start to vote Republican in significant numbers. Though, to speculate, the combination of
lower than average income, which increases the dependence on governmental
programs, and the Republican’s anti-immigrant stance, is likely to keep
minority groups (especially Latinos) voting Democratic.
Christopher
Dennis (with Marshall H. Medoff). 2011. “TRAP Abortion Laws and Partisan Political
Party Control of State Government,” American
Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 951-973.
Targeted Regulation of
Abortion Providers (or TRAP) laws impose medically unnecessary and burdensome
regulations solely on abortion providers in order to make abortion services
more expensive and difficult to obtain.
Using event history analysis, this paper examines the determinants of
the enactment of a TRAP law by states over the period 1974-2008. The empirical results find that Republican institutional
control of a state’s legislative/executive branches is positively associated
with a state enacting a TRAP law, while Democratic institutional control is
negatively associated with a state enacting a TRAP law. The percentage of a state’s population that
are Catholic or Evangelicals, public abortion attitudes, state political
ideology and the abortion rate in a state are statistically or numerically
insignificant predictors of a state enacting a TRAP law. The empirical results are consistent with the
hypothesis that abortion is a redistributive issue and not a morality issue.
This paper examines the
impact of partisan political party control of government on the restrictiveness
of a state’s abortion policy – the enactment of a parental involvement
law. The empirical results show that (1)
Control of a state’s legislative and executive branches of government by the
Republican (Democratic) Party increases (decreases) the likelihood a state will
enact a parental involvement law; (2) The more anti-abortion a state’s public
abortion attitudes, the more likely a state will enact a parental involvement
law; (3) Public anti-abortion attitudes do not act as a moderating force on the
link between partisan political party control and the enactment of a parental
involvement law; (4) The degree of electoral competition does not influence the
decision by legislators from the Republican or Democratic Party to support or
oppose the enactment of a parental involvement law; and (5) The impact of
partisan political party control on the enactment of a parental involvement law
has grown larger over time.
This study finds that the ratio of state
and local taxes as a percentage of income for the wealthiest 1% of non-elderly
households to the poorest 20% of non-elderly households in 2002 is
significantly influenced by the value of this same ratio for 1989, whether a
state has a multi-rate income tax, right-to-work laws, the liberalism of a
state’s electorate and the average tax burden in a state. Democratic strength in state government,
Republican control, change in median income, and change in the share of income
going to the wealthiest 1% of households are not significant predictors. The results are very similar for a top
2%-5%/bottom 20% ratio.
This study examines the
process by which state legislators respond to the public’s preferences about
abortion policy over time. We examine
the determinants of the enactment by a state of a parental involvement law
employing the event history analysis approach.
The empirical results suggest that, in the short-term, neither the
public’s abortion preferences nor institutional control of state government by
the generally prolife Republican Party has a significant impact on the
enactment of a parental involvement law, while institutional control by the
generally prochoice Democratic Party significantly decreases the likelihood of
the passage of a parental involvement law.
In the long-term, the public’s abortion preferences are positively
associated with the enactment of a parental involvement law. However, when the
Republican Party or the Democratic Party have institutional control of the
executive and legislative branches of state government, this allows each
political party to support or oppose the enactment of a parental involvement
law consistent with each party’s public position on the abortion issue,
regardless of the public’s abortion preferences or the competitive electoral
environment. The empirical results remain robust for a variety of alternative
specifications.
Peltzman (1984) argues that if constituents’
economic interests have well-defined “winners and losers” and are appropriately
measured, then constituents’ economic interests, and not legislator ideology,
are the most important determinants of legislator voting. We test Peltzman’s
theory by examining senatorial voting on three mandated spending reduction
bills. We find, consistent with Peltzman’s theory, that the ratio of federal spending in a
senator’s state to federal taxes paid by that state, and not a senator’s
personal ideology, matters on legislation where there are well-defined economic
“winners and losers.” This is
particularly important because unlike other constituents’ economic interest
measures that only impact a fraction of the constituency, the ratio of federal
spending to federal taxes in a state represents the total aggregation of all
money received by all recipients of federal spending in a state in relation to
the sum of federal taxes paid by that state.
Using a disaggregated measure that allows
us to better examine the distribution of state and local tax burdens between
high and low income groups, this research finds that in many models, Democratic
control is positively associated with a lower relative tax burden on the
poor. The results are stronger for
average Democratic strength in the state government than for unified Democratic
strength. The results are strongest when
comparing income groups just below the richest 1% (the next richest 2-5% and
the next richest 6-20%) with the poorest 20%.
Income inequality is strongly negatively associated with the degree of
state and local tax progressivity.
This paper replicates and extends Bailey
and Brady, “Heterogeneity and Representation: The Senate and Free Trade,” which
appeared in the American Journal of Political Science (1998, 42: 524-544). Bailey and Brady offer an explanation for the
counterintuitive finding that constituency variables are often unimportant in
studies of congressional roll call voting.
They argue that legislative representation is dyadic. Accounting for constituent heterogeneity
shows that legislators directly reflect their constituents’ preferences. The implication is that scholars who fail to
disaggregate states by heterogeneity reach conflicting results. We replicate
the authors’ statistical analysis and confirm their results. However, disaggregating the votes used as the
dependent variable shows important differences.
While the results for homogeneous states remain the same across
individual votes, the results for heterogeneous states change. More specifically, the degree to which
constituency matters varies across votes.
Consequently, we suggest that the limited finding for dyadic
representation only in homogenous states is premature. The results seem as likely to stem from
measurement problems as from differences in the representation process.
An important finding of legislative
research is that constituency variables are more important predictors of a legislator’s
vote when constituent preferences are homogeneous, as opposed to when the
various elements of the legislator’s constituency are pulling the legislator in
opposing directions (Goff and Grier, Public Choice, 76, 5-20; Bailey and Brady,
American Journal of Political Science, 42, 524-544). We examine these expectations on a highly
salient vote, the 1993 Senate vote on the North American Free Trade
Agreement. While we find support for the
view that constituency variables are more important in homogeneous than
heterogeneous constituencies, we also find that by confining constituency
variables to economic factors scholars overlook the importance of constituent
ideology on legislator behavior in homogeneous constituencies.
Recent media disclosures of American
campaign funding raising practices in the 1996 election have renewed political
interest in campaign finance reform.
This paper examines senatorial support for the McCain/Feingold measure
that would have established voluntary spending limits on Senate candidates and
banned unlimited campaign contributions through political party organizations.
While party affiliation and senator ideology are very important in explaining
support for the McCain/Feingold measure, various measures of electoral security
are not significant. This is important
because the public choice literature emphasizes that electoral self-interest of
legislators is probably much more accurately measured by the various electoral
security measures used in this study than by the constituency measures typically
employed in the public choice literature.
Nevertheless, personal legislator electoral security is not a powerful
explanatory factor.
The implementation of particular public
policies may infringe upon important civil rights of citizens. This article explores the relationship
between the racially disproportionate effects of the death penalty and a
subsequent attempt in the
The median voter model is widely used in
the public choice literature to explain legislator’s behavior. According to the model, if voter preferences
are unimodal, a vote-maximizing legislator should mirror the position of the
median voter. However, the median voter
model has not been tested on bi-modal issues.
This paper fills this critical void by empirically testing the
applicability of the median voter model on an issue which clearly meets the
criteria for being bimodal: abortion.
Using a variety of attitudinal measures from large sample public opinion
polls and constituency demographics, this study finds that Senate voting on the
1994 Freedom of Abortion Access bill was highly related to the senator’s
personal characteristics-especially ideology-and not to constituent opinion or
demographics.
Using variables that represent a
legislator’s entire legal constituency, previous research by social scientists
has concluded that views of the legislator’s constituency have little effect on
how legislators vote. This question is
reexamined by defining constituency as those voters most likely to vote for the
legislator (i.e., members of the legislator’s own political party and
independents). Furthermore, instead of
measuring constituency by either a demographic or vote-based measure, a survey
measure of the ideological identification of voters (i.e., the voter’s
self-identification as liberal, moderate, or conservative) is introduced. It is found that the ideology of a senator’s
electoral constituency was an important factor on the recent
How political parties impact the
distribution of income is an important topic.
The Omnibus Budge Reconciliation Act of 1990 is a very good indicator of
congressional differences on redistributive issues because it deals with an
important group of both revenue and expenditure changes. This study examines senatorial support for
four amendments to increase the progressivity of the legislation. For the congressional voting literature the
findings offer strong support for an ideological interpretation of voting
cleavages. Additionally, the results
indicate that well-organized and numerically important interests (e.g., the
elderly) do exert significant influence.
For the political economy literature the results show that partisan and
ideological differences on economic redistribution are important and are
consistent with the vast bulk of the literature: Democratic partisan and
liberal philosophical orientation are strongly associated with redistribution
favorable to low and middle income groups.
In recent years matrix organization theory
has offered an attractive and theoretically powerful alternative to traditional
bureaucratic forms of organization. Yet
the claims and propositions of matrix theory have not been tested against a
broad body of experience, largely because of the widely varying and
incomparable circumstances of identified attempts to use the matrix
approach. A set of close approximations
of the matrix model, namely government efforts to do environment impact
assessment, does exist and available data based on that experience offer the
potential for a limited test of the propositions of matrix theory. The authors assess whether such
approximations of matrix organization attain any of the benefits attribute to
the matrix approach. Our data do not
support those claims of matrix theory that we are able to examine. The authors consider a defense of matrix
theory and suggest a reconsideration of matrix assumptions and definitions.
Using parish-level data for
Over the past several decades, numerous
studies have examined correlates of black officeholding. This study increases our knowledge of black
officeholding by being the first study to use political attitudes as predictor
variables. Additionally, this study uses
a more valid measure of black electoral strength, the percentage of the
registered voters who are black, than previous research. The data come are for two states that keep
voter registration data by race:
Political action has affected postwar income
distribution in the