National Policies, Agendas, and Polarization in American State Legislatures: 2011 to 2014

• Date: 01 November 2017
• Author: Alex Garlick
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X17719719
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X17719719

American Politics Research

2017, Vol. 45(6) 939 –979

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X17719719

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Article

National Policies,

Agendas, and

Polarization in American

State Legislatures: 2011

to 2014

Alex Garlick1

Abstract

Why are some states polarized and others not? This article argues that

state legislators are provided with more information by lobbyists and the

media about national policies, or state-level bills that are prominent in

the national political discourse. Compared with state-specific issues, this

additional information encourages legislators to vote along party lines

to secure reelection or prepare for a run for higher office. It identifies

national policies using lobbying registrations in state legislatures and

Congress to show there is more party difference on roll-call votes on

national policies in 25 states over 2011 to 2014. It also argues that the

notoriety of national issues may encourage party leaders to put these bills

on the agenda to build their party brand, or for individual legislators to

raise their profiles. It finds that states with more national agendas have

more polarized sessions.

Keywords

state legislatures, Congress, polarization, lobbying, interest groups

1University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alex Garlick, The College of New Jersey, Department of Political Science, 2000 Pennington

Road, Ewing, NJ, 08628-0718, USA.

Email: garlicka@tcnj.edu

719719APRXXX10.1177/1532673X17719719American Politics ResearchGarlick

research-article2017

940 American Politics Research 45(6)

Introduction

In 2011, Ohio State Senator Shannon Jones introduced Senate Bill 5 (SB 5)

to reduce the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees. She told

the Dayton Daily News the bill would increase local budget flexibility and

not “punish unions.”1 But unions, led by the American Federation of State,

County and Municipal Employees, immediately organized protests, which

were met by counter protests by the tea party group FreedomWorks. After

acrimonious debate, the bill was passed, nearly on party lines. The unions and

Democrats then collected signatures for a citizen referendum, and despite

millions of dollars spent in support of the bill by Citizens United and the

National Federation of Independent Business, SB 5 was repealed later that

year.

This article argues that bills with national implications such as SB 5 differ

from the rest of the relatively anonymous state legislative agenda. State leg-

islators are poor at estimating the opinion of their constituents (Broockman &

Skovron, 2013; Uslaner & Weber, 1979), but protests, media coverage, and,

especially, contact from interest group lobbyists can clarify sentiment on a

bill. As the national parties resemble collections of interest groups (Bawn

et al., 2012), information from these groups is like hearing from the national

parties, which is consequential for state legislators interested in reelection or

upward advancement. Therefore, state legislators should be more likely to

vote on party lines on national issues.

Evaluating this argument is a challenge because prior literature does not

offer a consensus definition of national issues, or state legislative bills that

are prominent in the national political discourse. Scholars frequently discuss

issues the federal government sends to the states (Karch, 2006; Lowery, Gray,

& Baumgartner, 2011; McCann, Shipan, & Volden, 2015), but that is not a

necessary condition for a state-level policy to be national. Operationalizing

the definition necessitates capturing the perspective of a state legislator.

Consider a Pennsylvania state legislator’s view of education. In 2014,

President Obama made national news mentioning his “Race to the Top” pol-

icy in the State of the Union, and the American Federation of Teachers lob-

bied 40 state legislatures.2 But primary and secondary education is often

overseen by local school boards, and most of the groups that lobbied on edu-

cation, such as the Education Consortium of the Upper Allegheny and the

Philadelphia School Advocacy Partners, did not lobby before Congress or

any other states. Therefore, is it a state-specific or national issue?

To answer this question, I focus on the information transmitted by interest

groups and measure the lobbying population in each policy area. Matching

lobbying registrations from several states with Congress, I calculate how

Garlick 941

many of the interest groups that lobby in a state also lobby in Congress,

where they participate in the national political discourse. Issues that are lob-

bied by a higher share of national interest groups are deemed more national.

In Pennsylvania, 49% of the interest groups that report lobbying on education

also lobbied in Congress, which is well below the state’s average of 68%,

making education one of the most state-specific issues. Consistent with intu-

ition, the most national policies—abortion, guns, and gender issues—were

featured in national political debate. Meanwhile, the most state-specific poli-

cies were the budget, municipal and county issues, and education. These are

all policies characterized by local provision.

To establish a relationship between national policies and party polariza-

tion, I constructed a data set of more than 106,000 floor votes over the period

2011 to 2014 from the 25 states that systematically report the subject matter

of their legislation. I then estimate the average party difference, which high-

lights votes where the parties are unified in opposition to one another, for 31

issue areas. The issues that most divide the parties—abortion, gun control,

and campaign finance and elections—are national issues by my definition.

More broadly, there is a positive effect of nationalization on polarization: The

more nationalized an issue is, the more polarized it is.

Partisan behavior on national issues helps answer a persistent question in

the study of contemporary American state legislatures: Why are some polar-

ized and others not? Shor and McCarty (2011) found that on average, state

legislatures are less polarized than Congress. However, the average obscures

the fact that polarization varies wildly over states: The distance between the

party medians in Rhode Island is a third of that distance of Congress, while

in California, it is twice as long. Previous work primarily focuses on the elec-

toral connection to explain this heterogeneity. Shor and McCarty (2011) and

Kirkland (2014) contend that the polarization in the states reflects polariza-

tion in the electorate. Others have considered variation in electoral structure

such as primaries (McGhee, Masket, Shor, Rogers, & McCarty, 2014), cam-

paign finance (Barber, 2016; Harden & Kirkland, 2016; Masket & Miller,

2015), or gerrymandering (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2009). These lines

of research have all produced mixed findings, in part, because it is not clear

that voters sufficiently monitor and respond to the behavior of their state

legislators (Rogers, 2013).

More than elections, this account unpacks the roll-call record to explain

variation between legislative party polarization in different states. I argue that

the relevance of national issues for stakeholders and voters will encourage

rank-and-file legislators to push such bills to raise their profiles, even if it

runs against the wishes of party leadership. Because I found national issues

to be more polarized, states that have more national agendas should be more