Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-1-2023
Publication Title
American Politics Research
Abstract
There is significant disagreement on the moderating role of institutions on policy responsive- ness, yet overwhelmingly research in state politics has focused on single institutions. This project leverages a new aggregate scale of state institutions to evaluate if the collective insti- tutional context moderates the influence of public opinion on policy. I use a recently released latent scale of institutional context and find that high levels of accountability pressure strongly strengthen public opinion’s influence on policy for both economic and social policy, while the strength of a state’s checks and balance system is largely unrelated to policy responsiveness. These results demonstrate the importance of incorporating aggregate institutional design into our understanding of the role of institutions in state politics, and that collectively institutions play a large role in determining how public opinion is translated into policy.
Keywords
institutions, representation, responsiveness, states
Volume
51
Issue
2
First Page
210
Last Page
222
DOI
10.1177/1532673X221135554
ISSN
1532673X
Rights
© The Author(s) 2022
Recommended Citation
LaCombe, Scott J., "Institutional Design and Policy Responsiveness in US States" (2023). Government: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/gov_facpubs/61
Comments
Archived as published.