When Harold Laswell, a notable American political scientist, published his influential work “Politics: Who Gets What, When, How” in 1936, he could not have anticipated that the title would become a popular definition of politics among the general public, which has endured until now.
Research from the University of Rochester explores how things like class, race, and immigration status affect state spending. The researchers aimed to investigate whether the same biases that influence voting patterns, representation, and policymaking are reflected in state spending across different constituencies.
Unfair representation
To address this query, the researchers delved into historical archives and gathered information from six states for the years 1921, 1941, and 1961. The selected timeframe enabled the researchers to incorporate the significant changes in American society and government that followed the New Deal and the Second World War.
The researchers found clear evidence of bias, and that race, class, and immigration status had a significant influence on state legislatures’ budgeting and spending decisions.
By examining budget and spending patterns in California, Illinois, Montana, New York, Vermont, and Virginia, which were selected to represent a wide range of regions, party systems, size, level of urban development, and demography, the researchers discovered that certain demographic factors directly affected the amount of money a state spent on its constituents. Districts with higher numbers of immigrants or nonwhite residents received significantly less funding, while districts dominated by US-born, white Anglo constituents received more state funds.
Persistent bias
“We demonstrate that there is a strong and persistent bias in who gets what based on the demographics of constituents,” the researchers explain.
They analyzed spending patterns by studying 2,517 legislative districts, as well as their legislators and constituent populations. They took into account a range of factors in two distinct categories, including non-demographic aspects of the districts and attributes of the individual legislators.
“Legislators themselves have been the focus in most studies of distributive politics, as scholars have examined the advantages accruing to those with more seniority, those chairing committees, and those in the majority party,” the researchers conclude. “We speculate that the patterns of discrimination in state spending that we uncovered have persisted to the present day, given the evidence of continuing discrimination in other realms of American life.”
