Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2016

Abstract

Theories of economic globalization suggest that public opinion-public policy congruence should be affected by a state's degree of integration with international markets. With as much attention researchers have given to the opinion-policy linkage in the American states, it is surprising that this literature has neglected these well-known globalization frameworks. We take advantage of the wide variation in U.S. states’ integration in global markets, public policies, and political orientations of citizens, to assess whether global market integration depresses the association between citizen opinion and public policies. Using three decades of state-level data, our results suggest that high global market integration does not attenuate the relationship between state opinion and state public spending. Not only does this finding run counter to the well-known policy convergence thesis, but our results also suggest that the association between opinion and policy in the American states may be strongest under conditions of high global market integration.

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