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Transparency, Class Bias, and Redistribution: Evidence from the American States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Alexander Severson
Alexander Severson*
Affiliation:
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
*
Alexander Severson, Department of Political Science, Florida State University, 600 W. College Avenue, Tallahassee, FL 32303, USA. Email: aws12@my.fsu.edu
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Abstract

This study employs state-level panel data between 1978 and 2000 to explore the relationship between transparency, media market penetration, class bias in voter participation, and welfare effort in the United States. I present empirical evidence that the effect of transparency—operationalized as state fiscal transparency—on state welfare effort is conditional on class bias in voter participation. Specifically, I present evidence that in states where transparency and class bias increased over time, state welfare effort significantly declined. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for other determinants of redistribution that traditionally vary with geography such as governor partisanship, legislator ideology, citizen ideology, gross state product (GSP), and state demographic characteristics, and are robust across several alternate model specifications. My findings suggest that increased transparency does not automatically improve the condition of socioeconomically-disadvantaged citizens and that transparency may have welfare-reducing effects in societies with increasing participatory gulfs between the most and least advantaged citizens.

Keywords

transparencywelfareinequalitypanel data
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 271 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

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