Gambling Politics: State Government and the Business of Betting

Extract

Gambling Politics: State Government and the Business of Betting. By Patrick A. Pierce and Donald E. Miller. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004. 240p. $35.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

The traditional wisdom regarding the decision to adopt a lottery was that state policymakers turned to lotteries in an effort to avoid raising taxes. Yet at least one seminal study (Frances Stokes Berry and William Berry, “State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis,” American Political Science Review 84 [1990]: 395–415) suggests that such adoptions are most likely when the fiscal health of the state is relatively strong, among other things. These findings present some interesting and somewhat perplexing questions for those who study the gambling industry. If fiscal health of the state does not have a substantial impact on gambling adoptions, why then are the political battles surrounding those adoptions so often framed in terms of revenues? The revenues generated by even the most successful state lotteries and casinos are relatively small when compared to traditional taxes, such as sales and income tax (with the noteworthy exception of Nevada casinos, which have historically generated substantial portions of that state's total revenue). An important area for policy research is whether casinos are being viewed by states primarily as revenue generators or in some other terms. In the case of casinos, much of the discussion in some states has centered on the economic development possibilities of the casino industry.