Intergovernmental Management: Federal Changes, State Responses, and New State Initiatives

This article surveys state responses and new state initiativesin 1983 to three sets of successive federal changes in domesticpolicy. Collectively referred to as the New Federalism, thesechanges include the block grants and accompanying regulatoryreforms of 1981, the changes in Medicaid reimbursement policyof 1982, and the job training and development programs of late1982 and early 1983. Following a brief overview of these changesin intergovernmental management perspective, state responsesin 1983 are examined in three areas—policy development,policy and program management, and service delivery management.     

The Decline of the Legislative Veto: Federal/State Comparisons and Interactions

Legislative veto systems originated in the 1930s. Their numberincreased steadily until the early 1980s and then declined significantly.The decline of the legislative veto is attributable primarilyto decisions by a number of state supreme courts between 1980and 1984, and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983. Almost allcourt decisions have held the legislative veto to be an unconstitutionalviolation of the separation of powers. In addition, most proposalsto authorize the legislative veto by state constitutional amendmenthave been rejected by voters. There has also been a decreasein legislators' enthusiasm for the legislative veto, even instates where it has not been declared unconstitutional. Legislatorshave found other ways to control administrative agencies. Inexamining the decline of the legislative veto, one finds thatthe federal government exercised little influence over the states,the states exercised still less influence over the federal government,but the states did significantly influence one another.     

The Job Training Partnership Act: New Federalism in Transition

The Job Training Partnership Act of 1982 (JTPA) constitutedthe most recent, successful attempt by the Reagan administrationto devolve increased domestic program authority to the statesusing the block grant approach. Because of its heavy relianceon the participation of state governments and the private sector,JTPA may prove to be the real "acid test" of the Reagan NewFederalism. This article examines the implementation of JTPAin broad perspective. While preparations for the JTPA programbegan in most states during the early part of 1983, the programdid not really begin its first official program year until 1July 1984. After describing the major features of the act, thearticle focuses on the program's implementation. The analysisis based largely on the results of a nationwide study conductedunder the direction of the authors during 1984. The articleconcludes that, in terms of its legislative provisions and effectiveimplementation, JTPA has proved to be a "quasi-block grant"to the states.     

The Democratic Deficit in the States

We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state‐level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy‐specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking “democratic deficit”: policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.     

THE PLURALITY OF FACTORS INFLUENCING POLICYMAKINC: SCHOOL REFORM LEGISLATION IN THE AMERICAN STATES, 1982–84

This paper attempts to explore recent efforts of American state legislatures to improve the quality of public schools. Which state legislatures have passed school reform legislation? At what aspects of public education is this reform legislation aimed? Are there significant variations across states in such reform legislation? What has contributed most to the passage of such legislation? Is it the socioeconomic characteristics of individual states or the structural and procedural characteristics of their legislative branch that better explain school reform legislation? Analysis of data from the 50 states reveals greater variation in legislative results that reform public schools. The regional locus of most reform was the south. Most importantly, school reform legislation was found to be influenced by the interaction of a multitude of divergent forces. This finding suggests that researchers interested in the determinants of legislative action must move beyond analysis of whether economic or political forces shape legislative outcomes to inquire how economic, political and other forces interact when a given reform effort reaches the legislative halls of the states.     

Congressional allocation of federal funds: The Job Training Partnership Act of 1982

This paper examines the allocation of federal funds to the fifty states through the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982. Targeted at the economically disadvantaged, its allocation formula nevertheless places heavy weights on unemployment measures unrelated to the target group. Evidence is presented that supports the premise that JTPA formula allocations across states reflect political influence. This is the first study to find evidence of a relationship between state representative legislative tenure and federal fund allocations. The importance of a state's political power in influencing federal fund allocations is also revealed.     

Spies and Scientologists: ASIO and a controversial minority religion in Cold War Australia, 1956–83

Among all the controversial New Religious Movements to emerge since the Second World War, the Church of Scientology has arguably been subject to more scrutiny by domestic and international intelligence agencies than any other non-Islamic alternative religious group. While owing to the nature of intelligence gathering scholarly accounts of this have often been one-dimensional and brief, the situation in Australia resulting from the Archives Act 1983 has meant that historians of both intelligence agencies and new religions now have access to a significant amount of documentation illustrating the interactions between the Church of Scientology and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) for the period from 1956 to 1983. This period witnessed vacillating fortunes for the Church of Scientology which saw it become the subject of legislative bans in three Australian state jurisdictions during the late 1960s, as well as it launching a high profile, but ultimately unsuccessful, legal case against ASIO in 1979. While never considered a serious security risk by ASIO, the Church of Scientology played a minor role in a number of important events in the history of ASIO particularly during the 1970s, including participating in a wider activist campaign which sought to curtail ASIO’s operations during this period and making submissions to the first Royal Commission into the Australian Intelligence Services under Justice Robert Marsden Hope.     

Divided government and US federal rulemaking

Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the first to analyze the determinants of federal bureaucratic rulemaking activity across such a long period of time. Our results demonstrate that during periods of divided government, agencies issue fewer rules and fewer substantively significant rules than they do during periods of unified government. These findings suggest that divided government impedes agency rulemaking.     

New Federalism Modified: Jobs and Highways in New York

The Job Training Partnership Act of 1982 (JTPA) and the SurfaceTransportation Assistance Act of 1983 (STAA) were intended inpart to stimulate the American economy out of recession. Eachlaw embodied a different approach to that goal and, hence, poseddifferent implementation challenges to the states. JTPA wasintended to decentralize decisionmakingand administration tothe states, and to in volve the private sector in state andlocal decisionmaking processes. Moreover,the level of federalaid was reduced below that available under its predecessor,the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). STAA wasintended to inject increased federal funds for rebuilding roadsand highways. Its stipulation that states bring their standardsfor truck dimensions and routes into line with new nationalstandards was a centralizing feature of the legislation. Inexamining responses of the states in 1983 to these laws, particularlyNew York, decentralization appeared to be on track in the earlyimplementation of JTPA. The level of involvement of governorsand, to a lesser extent, legislatures was higher than underCETA. The implementation of STAA revealed both decentralizingand centralizing features at work. Participation of the NewYork legislature in deciding how the increased highway fundswere to be spent was much higher than before STAA, but conflictsbetween the national and state governments over the new nationalstandards were resolved in favor of the national government.     

Consistency in policy thinking

This study examines consistency in opinion on a variety of important state and national policy questions. The data come from a two-wave panel study of adult Floridians conducted in 1981 and 1982. Wide variations in consistency of opinion over the 1-year period are found. Salience has an important impact on consistency, with respondents who find an issue salient almost always exhibiting more consistent opinions, but salience cannot explain the variations in consistency across issues. The level of government on which the issue is focused (national or state) has no bearing on consistency. Most important, the particular nature of the issue itself, especially how central it is to the individual and how long it has occupied the political agenda (maturity), affects consistency of opinion. Centrality and maturity both contribute to issue attitude consistency and even can compensate for one another. Both highly central new issues and remote old issues can produce consistent attitudes, but deficiences in centrality seem to override issue maturity. These findings illustrate the value of looking beyond opinion distributions to the meaning of the survey response. With information on consistency and its sources, the public opinion analyst can interpret polling results intelligently, and the study of public opinion can become more objective and scientific.     

Education Polocy: A new Context for Governance

Since 1983 education policy has been in transition. The stateshave undertaken major initiatives to enhance academic rigorand improve student performance. These state actions have beenunprecedented, particularly with respect to the variety of educationissues addressed and the extent to which the actions involvestate policymakers in central schooling issues. The reformsmark fundamental changes in education governance. The stateshave become the leaders in education policymaking. The federalrole, historically small in terms of funding but important inproviding programmatic leadership, has diminished in the 1980s.Relationships among state education policymakers have changedin that legislators and governors have eclipsed state boardsand education experts in formulating policies related to teachingand learning. Finally, local districts feel that their autonomyis severely threatened by the reforms and wonder whether localcontrol is still a viable concept.     

ECONOMIC MOTIVES FOR "SOCIAL" PROGRAMS: THE NEW FEDERAL DIRECTION

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), passed by Congress in 1982, is significant federal employment and training legislation for a number of reasons. Most noticeably, it substantially enhanced private sector and state government roles in the administration of such programs. In order to understand both the programmatic impact of JTPA and its likely consequences on subsequent federal employment and training initiatives, it is necessary to look at the politics of the legislation-especially those interests that are strongly represented through its implementation and those that are not. By doing this, one obtains a better sense of the dimensions of conflict around future employment and training legislation. General guidelines within which Congress should act in subsequent legislative activity are laid out.     

The Impact of Job Training Programs on the Reemployment Probability of Dislocated Workers

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) of 1982 was enacted with the purpose of helping dislocated workers become reemployed through the provision of job training programs. Using data from the 1984 CPS Displaced Worker Survey, this study analyzes the impact of job training programs on the reemployment probability of dislocated workers. The results suggest that dislocated workers who received classroom training or on-the-job training were more likely to be reemployed. Dislocated workers who received only job search assistance, however, did not benefit from the assistance in terms of higher reemployment probability. In light of the legislative intent of JTPA Title 111 for increasing dislocated workers' human capital, the results suggest that state JTPA agencies should place more emphasis on the classroom training, which provides basic and job skills to dislocated workers.     

Legislative Capacity and Executive Unilateralism

This article develops a theory of presidential unilateralism in which both ideological divergence with Congress and legislative capacity influence the president's use of executive orders. We argue that when Congress is less capable of constraining the executive, the president will issue more executive orders during periods of divided government. Conversely, in periods of high legislative capacity, the president is less likely to issue executive orders when faced with an opposed Congress. Based on an examination of institutional changes, we identify years prior to the mid‐1940s as characterized by low congressional capacity and the subsequent period as characterized by high capacity. Testing the theory between 1905 and 2013, we find strong support for these predictions and demonstrate that legislative capacity conditions the role of ideological disagreement in shaping presidential action. Overall, this article deepens our current understanding of the dynamics of separation‐of‐powers politics and the limits of executive power.     

Policy Substance and Performance in American Lawmaking, 1877–1994

This article reconsiders the importance of including policy issue content and legislative significance in our study of lawmaking. Specifically, it demonstrates theoretically why lawmaking might vary by policy substance and empirically shows how incorrect conclusions would be drawn if lawmaking is studied by pooling enactments instead of disaggregating laws by policy issue content. It accomplishes this by bringing new tools, including a policy classification system and a way to measure the significance of public laws, to help overcome an array of measurement-related problems that have stymied our ability to better understand lawmaking. The policy coding schema introduced is applied, by careful individual human coding, to every public law enacted between 1877 and 1994 (n = 37,767). The policy issue and significance data are used to construct a number of new measures of legislative performance and are useful to test hypotheses within studies of Congress and American Political Development.     

Effectiveness of Connected Legislators

Important work has been done to measure legislative effectiveness in the U.S. Congress and to explain the individual characteristics that drive it. Much less attention, however, has been devoted to study the extent to which legislative effectiveness depends on the legislators' social connections. We address this issue with a new model of legislative effectiveness that formalizes the role of social connections, and we test its predictions using the network of cosponsorship links in the 109th–113th Congresses. We propose a new empirical strategy that addresses network endogeneity by implementing a two-step Heckman correction based on an original instrument: the legislators' alumni connections. We find that social connections are a significant determinant of legislative effectiveness. We also study the influence of legislators' characteristics in shaping the network effects. In doing so, we provide new insights into how social connectedness interacts with factors such as seniority, partisanship, and legislative leadership in determining legislators' effectiveness.     

An approach to the legislative production of the Spanish parliament (1979–1982)

Abstract. Analysis of Spain's first constitutional legislature (1979–1982) reveals (with the logical reservations derived from the fact that this was the first democratic legislature after the many years of Franco's dictatorship) the Spanish Parliament's important influence on the legislative process in terms of both initiating legislation and proposing amendments to bills introduced. This influence may possibly have stemmed from the fragile government of Union de Centro Democrático (UCD) at a time when the party had only a relative majority in Parliament and was torn by serious internal problems, both ideological and personal, which caused it to all but disappear in the 1982 election. All of this took place within the framework of a system of centralized political decision-making in which political leaders played a starring role.     

AGENDA-SETTING BY STATE LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUSES: POLICY PRIORITIES AND FACTORS OF SUCCESS

As their representation in legislative chambers has increased, black state legislators have organized into caucuses to maximize their policy influence. These caucuses act as policy entrepreneurs in initiating and advancing minority policy goals. The North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus is il- lustrative of an emerging force in half the states in moving minority policy issues from the systemic to the formal legislative agenda. Using the 1987 North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus as the research setting, supple- mented with selective data on other state caucuses, this article offers insights into the types of policy initiatives state legislative black caucuses advance. Also, situational and political factors that may foster successful agenda-setting are explored.