Do new electoral brooms sweep clean the economic policies of the parties that went before? In new research that examines how incoming Western governments set their spending priorities, Derek A. Epp, John Lovett, and Frank R. Baumgartner find that budgets tend to be set with little regard to a government’s ideology, be it left or right. They argue that when setting budgets, incoming policymakers are constrained by social, economic and international realities that are largely beyond their control. This means that budgets are set consistently and inconsistently with what went before at roughly the same rate; left-wing parties do not necessarily favor “big government” nor to right parties always seek to reduce government spending

Baumgartner, Frank R.

Epp, Derek A.

Lovett, John

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/10/02/electoral-turnover-has-very-little-effect-on-the-spending-habits-of-western-democracies/Electoral turnover has very little effect on the spending habitsof Western democracies.Do new electoral brooms sweep clean the economic policies of the parties that went before? Innew research that examines how incoming Western governments set their spending priorities,Derek A. Epp, John Lovett, and Frank R. Baumgartner find that budgets tend to be set withlittle regard to a government’s ideology, be it left or right. They argue that when setting budgets,incoming policymakers are constrained by social, economic and international realities that arelargely beyond their control. This means that budgets are set consistently and inconsistently withwhat went before at roughly the same rate; left-wing parties do not necessarily favor “biggovernment” nor to right parties always seek to reduce government spending.Americans will head to the polls in November of 2014 to elect a new government, each voterdoing their part to renew the political priorities of the nation. Subsequently, new legislators, andespecially the new president, whoever they are, will hope to bring about the changes thatmotivated their electoral victories. This, after all, is what elections are all about. The implication –hammered home by pundits and campaigns that today cost billions of dollars – is that thischange will lead to new ways of allocating fiscal resources, redirecting government spending tobetter solve social problems.In new research, we investigate the ability of democratically elected governments to redirectspending to reflect their ideological priorities. We discover that governments, while they doindeed attempt to make such changes, face major constraints. On the whole, budgeting looksalmost apolitical, in the sense that we cannot reliably distinguish the budgets of left- and right-wing governments. In fact, empirically, we find virtually no significant differences whatsoever.At face value, this seems counterintuitive. Anyone paying attention to US politics knows that Republicans andDemocrats have strongly divergent feelings about government spending. While this is especially clear in thecurrent, highly polarized political climate, even with a broad historical perspective we know that conservatives andliberals have very different political priorities, and the same can said for left- and right-wing parties across WesternEurope. Given these differences, we would naturally expect the spending habits of cross-ideological governmentsto be distinct.One way to begin untangling the puzzle is to simply list some of the factors that might prevent political leadersfrom implementing an ideologically consistent budget: mandatory spending formulas, directives from theEuropean Union, unforeseen natural or social crises, international conflict, economic turmoil, humanitarian crises,and so forth. Point being: the list is abundant. Any one of these factors puts pressure on political leaders to actand those actions come with budgetary consequences. In short, responsible governance may often precludeleaders from inflecting public budgets with their ideological prerogatives.Consider the case of President Reagan and national defense. A major component of his presidential legacy arethe dramatic increases in defense spending that took place during his first term – 1981 to 1984. Conventionalwisdom is that right-wing parties place a particular emphasis on defense and the appropriations Reagan presidesover certainly seem consistent with this logic. In only four years spending on defense grew by about $100 billion,or 20 percent. Clearly a case of ideologically consistent budgeting, our question is how often this type ofappropriation actually takes place.Figure 1 tracks total US budget appropriations toward national defense from 1947 to 2012, providing a newperspective on the changes from Reagan’s presidency. The light-grey shading indicates that a Republican was inthe White House and from this vantage point there is no clear or consistent link between having a right-wingpresident and increasing spending on defense. To the contrary, many large increases take place duringDemocratic presidencies and the increases enacted by Reagan can be seen as the continuation of a trend thatstarts with President Carter. Furthermore, Reagan, during his second term makes relatively large decreases tothe defense budget.Figure 1 – Budget Appropriations for National Defense in the Modern Era, 1947-2012The perspective gained from Figure 1 is important. Undoubtedly, ideologically consistent appropriations takeplace and, with a relatively limited focus, they are not particularly difficult to document. The concern that motivatesour research is that by focusing so disproportionately on the changes that can be considered consistent, we losesight of the budgetary process at large; a process where policy makers are tightly constrained by social,economic, and international realities that are largely outside their control.Instead of focusing on any particular political administration or public policy, our approach is comprehensive.Looking in as much detail as available data allow at the US, the UK, Denmark, and France, and thensystematically at 25 additional Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) countries, andcovering as much as sixty years of recent history, we look for patterns of change in national spending by left andright-wing parties, asking if shifts in spending can be explained by ideology.A key analytic component is to classify budget categories by political party. The general idea is that left-wingparties are associated with health, welfare, and domestic social services, whereas right-wing parties emphasizesocial order, crime prevention, and national defense. (Of course, a number of budget categories are not typicallyassociated with either a right- or left-wing ideology, and these we simply classify as “neutral.”)After assigning the budget categories to parties it is easy to determine if there is any systematic pattern ofspending consistent with ideology. A spending change is “consistent” if it increases spending more than theannual average to a budget category associated with the chief executive’s party, or if it increases less than theannual average to those categories associated with the rival party. “Inconsistent” budget changes would be(relative) cuts to one’s own party priorities or relatively great increases in those categories associated with therival party. Finally, as some budget categories are deemed ideologically neutral, some changes may also beconsidered “neutral.”Figure 2 shows the percentage of total appropriations that took place in each country across all available yearsthat are consistent, inconsistent, or neutral. The figure is sorted by the percentage of consistent changes andclearly there are big differences across countries. Topping the list is Greece, where almost 40 percent ofbudgetary appropriations are ideologically consistent, contrasting with Korea, near the bottom of the list, wherefewer than 20 percent of appropriations fall into this category. Most important, the bar for Total aggregates acrossall the preceding countries and shows that consistent and inconsistent changes, assessed collectively, occur atalmost exactly the same rate. Finally, the last four bars show the distribution of changes for countries wherebudget data is most plentiful, but the additional data does nothing to distinguish the spending patterns of thesecountries from their OECD counterparts.Figure 2 – Spending Consistency in OECD CountriesIn all, our results show very little support for even the most basic of budgetary distinctions; for example, the ideathat left-wing parties favor “big government” and right parties seek to reduce government spending finds noempirical support. Understanding public budgets as an expression of ideological priorities is probably misleading.Political parties are much more affected by the nature of the times and the particular policy challenges theyhappen to face during their time in office than they are able to force the implementation of what may well be theirsincere ideologically-based preferences. Sometimes, governance means doing what you have to do rather thanwhat you want to do.This article is based on the paper ‘Partisan Priorities and Public Budgeting’, in Political Research Quarterly.Featured image credit: Mayu Shimizu (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting  Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.  Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1wUBxeL______________________About the authorsDerek A. Epp – University of North Carolina – Chapel HillDerek Epp is a Ph.D. candidate in American Politics at the University of North Carolina, ChapelHill. His research focuses on policy change, asking why some policies persist – remaining thestatus quo for decades – while others undergo frequent adjustments._John Lovett – University of North Carolina – Chapel HillJohn Lovett is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, specializing inAmerican Politics.  His dissertation focuses on the notion of party branding and rebranding, andwhat conditions cause political parties to shift their issue priorities._Frank R. Baumgartner – University of North Carolina – Chapel HillFrank R. Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Scienceat the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the co-author of Agendas and Instability inAmerican Politics and other works.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

Electoral turnover has very little effect on the spending habits of Western democracies

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