DOES PARTY POLARIZATION IMPEAD REDISTRIBUTION? EVIDENCE FROM THE AMERICAN STATES

for allowing us to use the data presented in this paper. The authors are listed alphabetically and share equally for any errors, as well as the interpretations presented Recent research by McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal (2006) highlighting the constraining effects of polarization on the social welfare state appears to contradict earlier positions in political science (e.g., Key 1949) concerning the consequences of party polarization on the policy benefits that accrue to the poor. Capitalizing on variation in the degree to which state party systems are polarized, as well as recent federal devolution of welfare and health programs to the states, we examine the relationship between states ’ party polarization and their redistributive policy choices. Using new measures of state party polarization based on responses to more than twenty-thousand issue surveys completed by Democratic or Republican candidates for state legislature, governor, and congress between 1996 and 2006, we find no direct impact of polarization on redistributive policy. Instead, we identify important indirect effects in which polarization may magnify the effects of gridlock and party control in ways that are more likely to impede – but may also promote – redistribution