Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency, Political Institutions, and Electoral Incentives

• Published in: Policy studies journal Vol. 48; no. 4; pp. 926 - 952
• Main Authors: Li, Tianfeng, Feiock, Richard C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2020
• Subjects: Budgets; Change agents; Cognitive ability; Competition; Constituents; Elections; electoral competition; electoral incentives; Expenditures; Extreme value theory; Extreme values; Governors; Incentives; Information processing; legislative professionalism; Legislators; Limitations; Policy making; policy punctuations; policy transparency; Political institutions; Political systems; Politics; Professionalism; public preference; Stability; State budgets; Term limitations; term limits; Term of office; Transparency
• ISSN: 0190-292X; 1541-0072
• DOI: 10.1111/psj.12344

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits. 哪些因素导致长期稳定的政策偶尔被短期的重大变动所打断？本研究认为，选举激励可能会影响人们对选区问题信息的搜索、提供和处理，以及相关的认知性或制度性摩擦，从而决定间断性政策的发生和变化。本文采用由政策透明、政治制度和选举激励三者组成的系统框架来发展并评估这一论断。本研究使用极值理论（EVT）中的广义帕累托分布（GPD）来识别政策间断点。我们分析了美国50个州从1988到2008财政年度的预算支出数据。研究发现，较高的政策透明度与较大的支出稳定性是相关联的。相比之下，激烈的州长选举竞争更有可能带来支出的急剧变化。选举激励受到公共偏好和政治任期的影响，进而对政策的非渐进性变化造成很大影响。政策透明对政策变化的影响取决于公众偏好，而选举竞争和立法专业化对政策变化的影响则受任期限制的影响。具体来说，符合公共偏好的透明政策以及具有任期限制的立法专业特性更有可能带来间断性政策，而当州长（立法者）受限于任期制时，州长（立法者）竞争会带来较少的间断性政策变化。