Rights,review, and spending: Policy outcomes with judicially enforceable rights

Abstract. This paper posits that countries with a constitutional right to social security that can be enforced by courts via judicial review will show patterns of spending on social security that are distinct from countries with other constitutional and judicial arrangements. Governments in countries with enforceable rights will be constrained to spend more on transfer programs to avoid censure from the courts. The hypotheses are tested using data from 22 OECD countries using time–series cross–section analysis. The results show that enforceable rights are associated with higher growth rates in social security spending and lower fluctuation in expenditures on social programs, although the amount of GDP spent on social transfers is unaffected by rights. These results are consistent with the idea that governments' spending habits are constrained by positive rights, but rebut the argument that rights lead to economic distortions.     

Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences

This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to distributional outcomes but shows that government is generally just as responsive to the poor as to the rich. Utilizing theoretical insights from comparative political economy and time‐series data from 1952 to 2006, supplemented with cross‐sectional analysis where appropriate, we show that economic inequality is, in fact, self‐reinforcing, but that this is fully consistent with the idea that government tends to respond equally to rich and poor in its policy enactments.     

Budget Deficits in the States: Virginia

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