For Richer or Poorer: The Politics of Redistribution in Bad Economic Times

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917706549
• Author: Elizabeth Rigby,Megan E. Hatch
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917706549

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(3) 590 –603

© 2017 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917706549

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Article

Central to the exercise of political power is the enduring

question posed by Lasswell (1936): “Who gets what,

when, and how from government?” These questions are

inherently political ones with power, organization,

resources, and electoral concerns shaping the degree of

redistribution enacted into law. However, this policymak-

ing process occurs within a particular economic context

that shapes the resources available for redistribution

(Gray 2012; Plotnick and Winters 1985). To account for

this reality, political scientists frequently include mea-

sures of economic conditions as control variables in

quantitative studies of redistributive policymaking. The

aim of these controls is typically to separate the con-

founding effect of the economic context from the “purely

political” factors that we wish to understand better. Less

attention is paid to the ways that the economic context

may actually shift and shape the importance of political

factors in ways that both constrain political actors and

provide them with new opportunities to secure their exist-

ing policy priorities.

This limited attention to how economic conditions not

only affect—but change—the politics of policymaking is

surprising due to the extensive research in political econ-

omy exploring the interaction of economic conditions

and electoral politics—concluding that economic condi-

tions are central to public opinion and electoral outcomes

(Alesina and Rosenthal 1995; Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier

2000). Similarly, researchers have identified a role for

partisanship in shaping economic outcomes—with better

economic outlooks under Democratic Party control at

both the federal level (Bartels 2008; Fowler 2006; Hibbs

1977) and the state level (Kelly and Witko 2014). Kelly

and Witko (2014) begin to explore the role of policies as

mediators, noting distinct patterns of spending under dif-

ferent economic and political conditions. However, this

line of inquiry is rarely extended to the political economy

of redistributive or social policy, particularly studies of

policymaking in the American context (Barnes 2014;

Jacobs and Soss 2010).

To better understand how economic contexts alter

redistributive policymaking, we focus on one important

aspect: the business cycle, particularly economic down-

turns. Policymakers seem to respond to recessions and

other “bad economic times” by changing the balance of

redistributive policy through reduced spending paired

706549PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917706549Political Research QuarterlyRigby and Hatch

research-article2017

1George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

2Cleveland State University, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth Rigby, George Washington University, 805 21st St NW,

Suite 601C, Washington, DC 20052, USA.

Email: erigby@gwu.edu

For Richer or Poorer: The Politics of

Redistribution in Bad Economic Times

Elizabeth Rigby1 and Megan E. Hatch2

Abstract

This paper examines the consequences of economic downturns for states’ redistributive politics. We track state

policies from 1980 through 2010 and illustrate how economic downturns led states to adopt budget-balancing policies

by suppressing both the increased spending on programs benefiting the poor otherwise expected under Democratic

Party control and the tax cuts for the wealthy otherwise expected under Republican Party control. We also undertake

a natural experiment case study—comparing the forty Democratic and Republican governors in office right before

(2007–2008) and after (2009–2010) the onset of the Great Recession. We find that Republican governors were less

likely to propose spending and increased calls for spending cuts; yet, no similar shift in tax proposals was evident with

continued calls for tax cuts to the wealthy. Democratic governors exhibited a similar pattern, but were less responsive

and more likely to maintain their earlier policy proposals even after a significant downturn in the national economy.

Together, these findings highlight how economic and political conditions interact with one another to shape “who gets

what, when, and how from government,” as well as clarify that we must ask and answer these questions separately for

taxing and spending to capture the complex politics of redistribution.

Keywords

political economy, redistribution, political parties, policymaking, social policy, recession