Balkinization: The Future of State Politics: How Can We Get to a Good State?

The Future of State Politics: How Can We Get to a Good State?

Guest Blogger

For the Balkinization symposium on David Schleicher, In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Miriam Seifter

David Schleicher’s In a Bad State is an illuminating and engaging tour of past and present subnational fiscal crises. Its brilliance lies in showing how a set of tradeoffs prefigure our past and present difficulties and the available responses to them. Like other domains of policy and life where you can only “pick 2,” subnational fiscal policy is beset by a multi-part tension. Here, federal officials confronted with a subnational fiscal crisis can’t have it all: They can’t simultaneously avoid the harm that flows from recessions and austerity; the moral hazard that may follow bailouts; and the limits on lending and investment that follow defaults. Seeing how that trilemma has scripted history, and understanding how it can best be managed, is the fascinating journey of 11 of the book’s 12 chapters.

In one final closing chapter, the book moves in a different direction, with an argument I’ll consider in this post. Chapter 12 argues that the excessive state debt that exacerbates fiscal crises is a result of bad state politics. People don’t pay attention to their state officials, who then cater to powerful interest groups with bad fiscal incentives. In the book’s parting sentences, Schleicher asserts: “More and better state democracy would help state and local fiscal policy, and is something we can insist on. Ultimately, that is the best way out of a bad state.” (p.171)

This is an important, generative diagnosis. I want to explore it by asking two questions. First: Is our collective inattention to state institutions changing, such that Schleicher is diagnosing an already-improving problem? Second, is he prescribing the right solution? That is, will greater attention to state-level policymaking yield improvements in the tortuous domain of state fiscal policy? Or would we need something more or different to get to a good state?

Let’s start with the first question. Schleicher undoubtedly identifies something real when he laments our collective disengagement from state-level democracy. Drawing his own prior work and that of others like Daniel Hopkins, Schleicher observes that voters are ignorant of state government, vote based on national politics, and fail to hold subnational officials accountable for their actual decisions. The result? “[S]tate and local politicians do not seek, and do not receive, a public mandate from ordinary voters. They are instead responsive to narrow and unrepresentative groups of voters and interests.” (p.170) I too have written about how state institutions may in fact be further from the people, not closer to them. And I co-direct the State Democracy Research Initiative, which is premised on the idea that collective neglect of state institutions disserves to democracy. So the inadequacy of attention to state-level institutions is well-taken.

Still, I wonder, optimistically, whether some of the well-documented inattention to state institutions is changing. The one-two punch of the pandemic and the 2020 election showed, dramatically, the weighty consequences of state-level policy. The recent SCOTUS decisions in Rucho and Dobbs have led to surging interest in state courts and constitutions, and new scholarly analysis is emerging. Heightened awareness of problems with policing and incarceration have brought to the fore the intricacies of police agencies, sheriffs, and prosecutors.

These developments are not just taking place in the academy. When two legislators were expelled from the Tennessee legislature, a major mobilization within Tennessee and beyond its borders energized coverage of and organizing around state legislatures. Wisconsin’s recent, high-profile state supreme court race featured both record-breaking spending and high turnout, and Judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a whopping 11-point margin—an unusual margin for the state, suggesting that at least some state races are not just mini federal races. In New York, organizers have changed the norms around judicial confirmations from a rubber-stamp to a hard-look process leading to the rejection of nominee Hector LaSalle.

But that brings me to my second question. Will this new energy at the state level help improve fiscal policy? Maybe not, for two different reasons.

One is that the realm of state budgets is especially opaque. The budgeting processes are byzantine and not well-known to the public (which is not to say the information isn’t out there – please enjoy this 70-page summary of Wisconsin’s process). The actual allocation and expenditure of funds is often its own subterranean world, with peculiar norms and institutional powers (here’s an example from Wisconsin again, where a “secretive pocket veto” from a legislative committee can halt spending on projects).

The complexity and opacity of state fiscal policy thus seems like one obstacle to Schleicher’s premise of more public-minded pressure on policymakers. Fiscal stewards can’t just freeride on broad-based interest in state policy or state courts. The world of debt and budgets has additional levels of invisibility to surmount.

There’s also the possibility of a deeper problem with Schleicher’s democracy cure. His take, recall, is that more democracy will lead us to better fiscal discipline. But if people knew more about state budgets, would they actually vote and lobby in a way that would be good for rainy day funds and manageable debt? Is majoritarian democracy good for fiscal policy?

Scholars in other fields have explored this question. For example, take the taxation that might be necessary for infrastructure or other public services. One view is that voters generally don’t like taxes, or resist them when the taxes are highly visible. That makes Schleicher’s view seem dicey, because responsive politicians may be disincentivized from raising necessary revenue. But voters also register support for various public programs and services, and are (sometimes) willing to pay taxes to support them. So the answer may be that it depends. The challenge of harnessing local democracy to serve sound fiscal policy will often be a problem of design. According to social scientists, whether voters support various tax policies seems to hinge on framing and phrasing, on available information, on social movements and popular mobilization, and even on the timing of proposals vis-à-vis other policy steps.

All of this suggests that even as more attention pours into states, there’s no easy fix for fiscal stress. More general attention won’t necessarily spotlight fiscal decisionmaking, and more attention to fiscal decisionmaking won’t necessarily yield prudent decisions without careful attention to design. But In a Bad State certainly didn’t promise easy fixes, and Schleicher’s plea for better state democracy is welcome. To get to a good state, we’ll need to invest carefully in state-level democracy.

Miriam Seifter is a Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. You can reach her by e-mail at miriam.seifter@wisc.edu.

Posted 9:30 AM by Guest Blogger [link]