The happy median? : an examination of the role of partisanship on social spending

This thesis examines the effect of party-level partisanship on social spending outcomes. Building a model in which party-politician bargaining plays a central role in determining the passage of bills, this paper develops a theory predicting the superior performance of moderate parties in proposing and passing legislation. Testing this theory using historical roll-call and social spending data, this paper finds that the effects of ideology are not so simple, and that the effects of partisanship on party effectiveness varies with the type of policy examined.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Fisher, Matthew L

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• James Snyder, Jr.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62470

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/62470