State TANF Spending: Predictors of State Tax Effort to Support Welfare Reform

State spending on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) greatly varies. Combined federal and state spending by the states per TANF family or recipient reflects the historic level of state generosity for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the failure of the federal government to set any minimum spending standard for the states, and the failure of the federal government to adjust federal grants for huge changes in state TANF caseloads. Our multivariate analysis shows that state spending for TANF is greatly influenced by the percentage of the state population that is black, the percentage of the state population that is on TANF (especially if a significant percentage of the rolls consist of black recipients), and the economic conditions within the state. Some states spend as much as their economies will allow, while other states spend far below capacity. Despite the very different goals of TANF, state spending is still heavily influenced by their historic approach to AFDC.     

Money,State, Hegemony: A Political Ontology of Money

This article develops a political understanding of the money-form, its relation to value, to society, and to the state. It argues that the value of assets is based on societal relations. These value relations are expressed in a general measure of value – money. Money serves as the equivalent for all asset values. This general equivalent is conceptualized as a master signifier. Based on Laclau’s political theory and theories of International Political Economy, the article argues that it is the master signifier, which not only defines the assets’ value relations, but also constitutes the assets by assigning value. It follows that the value of an asset can only be determined when it can be expressed in money, and that asset values can only be made comparable when they can be related to this general money-form. Furthermore, the transition from a specific object or credit to the money-form is theorized as a political process. Money ultimately represents a specific political relationship resulting from hegemonic struggles. To conceptualize money as a master signifier makes it possible to understand money not as a neutral measure of abstract value but as a general measure of value relations resulting from political processes and social struggles.     

State Tax and Expenditure Limitations: There is No Story

Out of the troubled economic atmosphere of the late 1970's grew a discontent with government in general and taxation in particular. The tax revolt took hold at the local level and placed limits on the growth of the property tax through celebrated citizen initiatives like Proposition 13 in California. At the national level, uneasiness with the role of government and a sense that taxation was too high culminated in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. The electorate embraced promises of less government and lower taxes. For states, the tax revolt resulted in a number of state tax and expenditures limitations (TELS). Most had several things in common: they were adopted before 1983, they addressed state appropriations, and they were largely a western phenomenon spreading from California. The overall condition of state economies and structure of state tax systems, in combination with the sensitivity of policymakers to anti-tax sentiment, have done more to limit state spending than have imposed restrictions.     

From Fistfights to Firefights: Trait Aggression and Support for State Violence

Aggression is a fundamental component of human behavior, yet is mostly absent from scholarship on mass political behavior. This study proposes and tests a theory of state violence attitudes in which citizens develop preferences from aggressive personality traits. In an original nationally-representative survey, trait aggression strongly predicts support for violent state policies, as does its subcomponent trait anger, rivaling the power of partisanship. More provocatively, the well-documented gender gap in state violence attitudes replicated here is not attributable to sex differences in aggressive personality. This work builds on recent advances in political personality research and highlights the important role of aggression in political behavior.     

Metropolitan Governance: Voter Support and State Legislative Prospects

With increased public attention to the problems in both centralcities and suburban areas, the feasibility of metropolitan governanceis being considered again. Myron Orfield's work on regionalcooperation in Minneapolis-St. Paul has suggested that statelegislative action can be used to achieve that outcome. However,state legislators are unlikely to promote regional policiesunless they have some evidence their constituents support them.This article uses election data from California propositionsto test the connection that Orfield asserts between demographiccomposition of an area and voter support for regional issues.The data suggest several shortcomings of his model, includingthat race or ethnicity and the diversity of an area substantiallyaffect the outcome in ways he did not consider.     

Constitutional Dimensions of State and Local Tax Deductibility

President Reagan's proposal to eliminate the deduction of stateand local taxes for the purpose of assessing federal incometaxes will vastly enlarge the scope of the federal government,unduly burden state and local governments, and greatly harmthe federal system. The essence of the federal idea is thatthere are arenas of government that must not be invaded by othergovernments. Yet the Treasury Department would have us believethat the most fundamental activities of state and local governmentsare in some significant sense paid for by the federal governmentthrough "subsidies" provided by the federal tax code.     

State Government Expenditure Determinants and Tax Revenue Determinants Revisited

The primary aim of the research was to test the general hypothesis that many institutional and political variables affect fiscal outcomes; that the preferences of public officials, and the decision processes used to act on those preferences, matter. State government data (state only, not state and local) from 1980, 1985, and 1990 were used to specify state tax revenue and expenditure models. A previous (Merrifield, 1991) state tax revenue model identified many significant institutional and political variables, but it was based only on 1985 data (49 observations). The larger data set (147 observations), including better data for some of the variables, indicated that most of Merrifield's (1991) findings are robust. The state expenditure models facilitated a second test of the general institutional and political variable hypothesis, as well as the hypotheses about specific variables. The expenditure model also facilitated comparisons of expenditure and tax determinants, and comparisons with results published in the literature. Though there are some noteworthy differences between the expenditure and tax models, the expenditure models also supported many of the institutional and political variable hypotheses.     

State Tax Cuts of 1995: Is Something New Afoot?

Perhaps the hottest fiscal topic in state capitals in 1995 was tax cuts. When legislatures convened in January, it appeared possible that states were on the verge of an unprecedented wave of tax cuts. The Republican landslide of November 1994 swept into office many new governors and legislators who had campaigned on reducing taxes. Governor Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey was considered a role model by many of them. Perhaps state tax policy was about to take a major new direction. According to some reports, that is precisely what happened. For example, Stephen Moore, Director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, wrote the following introduction to his overview of state tax policies:1 1995 is shaping up to be the biggest tax-cutting year in more than 10 years…. [T]he supply side philosophy that low tax rates and expenditure controls are the key fiscal tools to state economic competitiveness now appears to be the new governing philosophy in state capitals from Albany to Sacramento. The Pete Wilson, Lowell Weicker, Jim Florio soak-the-rich philosophy of the early 1990s has been nearly universally repudiated across the states. Meanwhile, “Whitmanomics,” named after tax-cutting Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, is spreading rapidly to other states. In fact, there was a wave of state tax cuts in 1995 with about half of the states enacting reductions of some kind. But it appears premature to draw the strong conclusion that this marked a radical change in state fiscal policy. State legislatures trimmed or rejected most of the proposals for large tax cuts. Most of the 1995 tax cuts were small or modest in size Rather than a new departure, they are consistent with past policies at similar points in the business cycle. It is also possible, however, that something new really is afoot. Conservative anti-tax forces are gaining strength in the states, just as they are at the federal level. If it were not for prospective federal aid cuts, state tax policy really might become more conservative. But the shift of federal responsibilities to states will represent a formidable obstacle to large state tax cuts in the coming years. This article places the tax cuts of 1995 in perspective. It begins with a detailed discussion of ambiguities'in defining and measuring tax reductions and increases. This discussion can be applied to any time period and will remain relevant after concern     

Tax and Expenditure Limitations and State and Local Fiscal Structure: An Empirical Assessment

The tax and expenditure limitation (TEL) "movement" of the 1970s and 1980s can be characterized in part as a struggle between local autonomy and state control. Undeniable shifts have occurred over the same period in state and local revenue systems and functional responsibilities. This article places these shifts within the context of this movement, using pooled, cross-sectional, time-series techniques for the period between 1970 and 1990, in an effort to assess its impacts. Findings suggest that TELs have resulted in increased centralization, lessened local responsiveness, increased use of local non-tax sources of revenue, and a sector less accommodating to the needs of dependent populations. TELs may have also had dubious effects on both the allocative efficiency and equity of the state and local public sector.     

Framing Deservingness to Win Support for Welfare State Retrenchment

Recent studies of welfare state retrenchment have argued that policy makers can win public support for welfare state reform by framing the issue in terms of deservingness of welfare recipients. However, this literature has not tested the argument at the individual level. Using a Scandinavian context, this experimental study investigates how alternative framing of a welfare state retrenchment proposal affects citizens' perception of welfare recipients' deservingness, policy support and whether perceptions of deservingness mediate policy opinion. A news story was manipulated to present welfare recipients as either deserving or undeserving of welfare benefits. This issue framing affected citizens' perception of deservingness as well as support for retrenchment policy. Opinion change was partly explained by differences in perceptions of deservingness. These results provide strong support for the effectiveness of the deservingness frame.     

高等教育的新理念:全人教育

本文针对我国高等教育存在的严重的科学主义倾向,以至形成所谓的“半个人”或者“单面人”教育的现象,提出应树立全人教育的理念,认为应通过传授“整全的知识”以形成“健全的人格”,不仅使学生懂得“何以为生”,更重要的是使学生知道“为何而生”,成为德业双收、人格完善的人才。     

Public Support for Corporate Social Responsibility in the Welfare State: Evidence from Sweden

Several scholars have claimed that we are currently witnessing a growing saliency of so‐called ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR). Yet, while there is a lot of work suggesting that public opinion might prompt firms to behave in socially responsible ways, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring the extent ordinary to which citizens actually support CSR. Moreover, the state is conventionally theorised as the main institutional device for governing markets and their social consequences, and there is a growing literature exploring the relationship between CSR and the state. On the basis of these observations, this article juxtaposes public attitudes towards CSR and state intervention in the market. Considering that attitudes might vary across groups with different structural relationships to the firm, this study also looks at the social bases of support for different attitude profiles. Using Swedish survey data collected in 2011 and latent class analysis, the empirical results demonstrate that most Swedes in favour of CSR are highly supportive of state intervention in the market. The study of social cleavages restates this pattern: social groups with fewer marketable resources are strongly over‐represented in supporting a combination of CSR and state intervention in the market. No clear social profile is found for the relatively small group of people who support CSR but not state intervention. It is concluded that voluntary CSR is unlikely to offer a serious full‐scale alternative to the welfare state: Swedes continue to think of public authorities as the ultimate institutional guarantor of social welfare.     

Mobilizing Interest: The Effects of Money on Citizen Participation in State Supreme Court Elections

In this article, we investigate one highly significant aspect of the role of money in judicial elections: whether campaign spending increases citizen participation in the recruitment and retention of judges. Specifically, by using a two-stage modeling strategy that allows us to separate the effects of challengers from the effects of money, we assess whether relatively expensive campaigns improve the chances that citizens will vote in the 260 supreme court elections held from 1990 through 2004 in 18 states using partisan or nonpartisan elections to staff the high court bench. We find that increased spending significantly improves citizen participation in these races. Whether measured as the overall spending in each election or in per capita terms, greater spending facilitates voting. We conclude, contrary to conventional wisdom about the deleterious effects of money in judicial elections, that by stimulating mass participation and giving voters greater ownership in the outcomes of these races, expensive campaigns strengthen the critical linkage between citizens and the bench and enhance the quality of democracy.     

The Impact of Tax Revenue from Capital Gains Realizations on State Income Tax Revenue and Budget Conditions

We explore the effect of the rapid increase in capital gains realizations on state income tax revenue during the 1990s and 2000s, and the effect that this had on state fiscal decisions regarding the use of these revenue. We find wide variation in the growth of capital gains realizations across states and that the growth in capital gains had a significant effect on state income tax revenue for many states. We find that states used a sizable portion of the additional revenue from capital gains to fund reserves in the year the revenue was generated, and that capital gains revenue lead to some reductions in taxes but not to increases in expenditures. The evidence suggests that states were conservative in their use of capital gains related revenues.