P Flavin
Biographic Data
| ID | 19131 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Flavin |
| GIVEN NAMES | P |
| FAMILY NAME | Flavin |
| SIGNATURE | FLAVIN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Baylor University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9586-7189 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 494 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Did Trump do better where inflation was worse? Evidence from county-level data
Democracy and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from Updated Global Data
Citizens’ perceptions of the quality of democracy in the American states
Objective We examine the relationship between citizens’ evaluations of democratic performance in their state of residence and demographic, political, and institutional factors. Methods We fielded two original surveys (summer 2021 and summer 2022) that asked respondents to evaluate democratic performance in their state both in general and for specific metrics. Results Citizens who identify with the political party that controls state government ha…
State Pride and the Quality of Democracy in the American States
We evaluate whether feelings of state pride in the USA are linked to the quality of democracy in one’s state. Using two original surveys, we find no relationship between an objective measure of the quality of state democracy and feelings of state pride. In contrast, we find a consistent positive relationship between subjective evaluations and state pride such that citizens with more positive evaluations of the quality of democracy in their state …
State government control and partisan happiness
Does politics impact happiness? This paper evaluates how being a political “winner” or “loser” – whether one’s preferred party controls government or not – is linked to multiple measures of life satisfaction. Using Gallup survey data on self-reported well-being for Democrats and for Republicans within the U.S. states for 2008–2016 (a time period when party control of government changed in several states) and a difference-in-difference model with …
Democracy's Meanings: How the Public Understands Democracy and Why It Matters by Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel
Journal Article Democracy's Meanings: How the Public Understands Democracy and Why It Matters by Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel Get access Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022. 254 pp. $75.00. Patrick Flavin Patrick Flavin Baylor University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9586-7189 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Q…
State Labor Laws and Government Responsiveness to Public Opinion
We investigate the effects of states’ labor laws, which can enhance or diminish the political power of public and private sector labor unions, on government responsiveness to public opinion. Drawing on newly developed measures of public opinion and policy liberalism in the US states over time, we leverage differences in the timing of law enactments across the states and find that labor laws impact government responsiveness in distinct ways. State…
Is There a Tradeoff Between Policy Responsiveness and Government Effectiveness? Evidence From the American States
Citizens in a democracy expect elected officials will be responsive to their political opinions and govern in an effective way that improves their quality of life. However, a government that is too responsive to public sentiments may, in practice, be unable to govern effectively and promote societal well-being. This study is the first attempt to date to empirically evaluate this important potential tradeoff. Using newly developed measures of publ…
Ideological proximity, issue importance, and vote choice
Explaining State Preemption of Local Laws: Political, Institutional, and Demographic Factors
Despite increasing popular and media attention to the preemption of local policymaking by state governments, the empirical political science literature on preemption remains relatively scarce. After first identifying and discussing state preemption laws across twenty-one diverse public policies, we investigate how political, institutional, and demographic factors predict the implementation of these laws. Our empirical analysis reveals that states…
Economic Segregation and Unequal Policy Responsiveness
Comparing Two Measures of Electoral Integrity in the American States
We compare two widely publicized measures of state electoral integrity in the United States: the Electoral Integrity Project's 2016 U.S. Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Survey and the Pew 2014 Elections Performance Index. First, we review the theoretical and empirical differences between the two measures and find that they correlate at a surprisingly low level across the states. Second, given this low correlation, we examine the component part…
Labour market regulation and subjective well‐being in low‐income countries
A growing literature suggests social democratic policies, as exemplified by the welfare state and active labour market policies, promote higher levels of life satisfaction compared to the neoliberal agenda of austerity, smaller government and more ‘flexible’ labour markets. In this article, this inquiry is extended to low‐income countries. A theoretical argument is developed for why labour market regulation (LMR) (rather than social welfare spend…
State government public goods spending and citizens' quality of life
State Medicaid Expansion and Citizens’ Quality of Life
Objectives The U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 ruling on the Affordable Care Act was a federal exogenous shock that presented all states with the decision to continue their Medicaid program in its current form or expand it to include thousands of newly eligible recipients. This article takes advantage of this exogenous shock to evaluate the impact of Medicaid expansion on citizens’ quality of life. Methods I evaluate changes from 2010 to 2014 in low‐in…
Labor Union Strength and the Equality of Political Representation
Amid growing evidence of ‘unequal democracy’ in the United States, labor unions can play a potentially important role by ensuring that low-income citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. To investigate this possibility, this article evaluates the relationship between labor union strength and representational equality across states and finds evidence that states with higher levels of union m…
The State of the Minimum Wage: Federalism, Economic Policy, and Workers’ Well-Being
In this essay, we contribute to the growing national discussion about the future of minimum wage policy and its implications for working class Americans. First, we discuss the politics of the minimum wage in the United States, with special attention to the sizable and rich variation across the fifty American states and the importance of federalism. Second, we examine competing theoretical arguments (and, when available, empirical evidence) about …
Democratic Institutions and Subjective Well-Being
We examine how differences in how democracy is institutionalized affect life satisfaction across nations. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous, systematic study of this subject. Using data for 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1981 to 2008, we find robust evidence that citizens report living more satisfying lives in countries with a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, a proport…
Government's Unequal Attentiveness to Citizens' Political Priorities
An accumulation of evidence suggests citizens with low incomes have relatively little influence over the policy decisions made by lawmakers in the United States. However, long before elected officials are asked to cast a final vote on a bill's passage, an equally important decision has already been made: the decision for government to focus its limited attention and agenda space on the issue at all. Therefore, it is possible that political inequa…
Racial Inequality in Democratic Accountability: Evidence from Retrospective Voting in Local Elections
One important and, to date, overlooked component of democratic accountability is the extent to which it might exacerbate existing societal inequalities if the outcomes for some groups of citizens are prioritized over others when voters evaluate governmental performance. We analyze a decade of California school board elections and find evidence that voters reward or punish incumbent board members based on the achievement of white students in their…
District Voter Turnout and Dyadic Representation in Congress
One of the most important tools by which citizens can influence their elected officials' behavior is through voting—the electoral connection. Previous studies demonstrate that the opinions of voters are better represented than the opinions of nonvoters within an electoral jurisdiction, but we do not know whether jurisdictions with higher levels of aggregate voter turnout are better represented by their elected officials compared to those with low…
Labor Union Membership and Life Satisfaction in the United States
While a voluminous literature examines the effects of organized labor on workers’ wage and benefit levels in the United States, there has been little investigation into whether membership in a labor union directly contributes to a higher quality of life. In this paper, we uncover evidence that union members are more satisfied with their lives than those who are not members and that the substantive effect of union membership on life satisfaction r…
Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states
Direct Democracy and Political Equality in the American States
Objectives This study investigates the relationship between direct democracy and the equality of opinion‐policy representation in the American states. Methods Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policy outputs, I generate an index of the equality of political representation (based on citizens’ incomes) that is comparable across the states. I then evaluate the relationship between different …
American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter
If you asked 100 people to define “democracy,” you might receive 100 different answers. The bulk of those answers, however, would likely make some reference to laws or institutions such as popular elections, guaranteed civil liberties, or limits on government power. In his book, Andrew J. Perrin instead adopts a sociological approach and reminds the reader that democratic culture (the norms and practices that citizens establish for interacting wi…
Income Inequality and Policy Representation in the American States
Government representation of public opinion is a central component of democracy. Previous studies have documented a robust congruence between aggregated public opinion and public policies in the American states. However, an equally important question for evaluating the quality of democracy is “Who does government respond to when formulating public policies?” I investigate differential policy representation based on citizens’ household incomes and…
When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization
Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Explo…
From the Schoolhouse to the Statehouse: Teacher Union Political Activism and U.S. State Education Reform Policy
Elementary and secondary education policy making in the U.S. states is heavily influenced by the political bargaining of various actors, with teacher unions one of the most important actors. Yet previous studies that assess the impact of teacher unions on education reform use problematic measures of their direct political influence, instead opting for broader measures of membership or collective bargaining power. By contrast, the authors measure …
Racial Differences in Information, Expectations, and Accountability
Citizens contribute to the process of democratic accountability by acquiring information about their elected officials' behavior, comparing this information to their expectations regarding substantive representation, and voting in elections based on the result of this comparison. However, citizens possess varying levels of information about, and different expectations of, Representatives' voting behavior. This raises the possibility that some cit…
Labor union membership and voting across nations
Two Distinct Concepts: Party Competition in Government and Electoral Competition in the American States
American state politics scholars have generally relied on Ranney's measure of the partisan composition of state legislatures and governors' offices to evaluate competition between parties for control of state government, and Holbrook and Van Dunk's measure of the competitiveness of individual state legislative elections to evaluate the degree of electoral competition in a state. Both measure “competition” and were previously correlated with one a…
How Citizens and Their Legislators Prioritize Spheres of Representation
The authors uncover evidence that citizens’ priorities about various spheres of legislative representation differ across demographic groups and that these differences are subsequently reflected in the in-office behavior of their elected officials. Specifically, African Americans and Latinos are less concerned than whites with policy representation—the attentiveness of elected officials to citizens’ policy preferences—but place more emphasis on th…
Labor Union Strength and the Equality of Political Representation
Amid growing evidence of ‘unequal democracy’ in the United States, labor unions can play a potentially important role by ensuring that low-income citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. To investigate this possibility, this article evaluates the relationship between labor union strength and representational equality across states and finds evidence that states with higher levels of union m…
Explaining State Preemption of Local Laws: Political, Institutional, and Demographic Factors
Despite increasing popular and media attention to the preemption of local policymaking by state governments, the empirical political science literature on preemption remains relatively scarce. After first identifying and discussing state preemption laws across twenty-one diverse public policies, we investigate how political, institutional, and demographic factors predict the implementation of these laws. Our empirical analysis reveals that states…
Campaign Finance Laws, Policy Outcomes, and Political Equality in the American States
Laws that regulate the financing of campaigns are one attempt to attenuate the role of money in politics and promote more egalitarian policy outcomes. Do states with stricter campaign finance regulations represent citizens’ interests more equally? Using data on state spending priorities from 1977 to 2008, this article finds that states with stricter campaign finance laws devote a larger proportion of their annual budget to public welfare spending…
Government's Unequal Attentiveness to Citizens' Political Priorities
An accumulation of evidence suggests citizens with low incomes have relatively little influence over the policy decisions made by lawmakers in the United States. However, long before elected officials are asked to cast a final vote on a bill's passage, an equally important decision has already been made: the decision for government to focus its limited attention and agenda space on the issue at all. Therefore, it is possible that political inequa…
Public Policies and Suicide Rates in the American States
State Intervention and Subjective Well‐Being in Advanced Industrial Democracies
While there is a vast and contentious literature devoted to the debate over “politics versus markets,” scholars have devoted little empirical attention to the fundamental question of how the choice between these two approaches to public policy affects the overall quality of human life. Contending arguments make powerful claims for the superiority of each as the best mechanism for generating and distributing well‐being. We attempt an empirical app…
Labor Unions and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from New Data
Policy, Preferences, and Participation: Government's Impact on Democratic Citizenship
Do government policy decisions impact citizens' involvement in politics? Using panel data, we assess the extent to which variation in levels of political participation among citizens between 2000 and 2004 is linked to the nexus of citizens' preferences and government policy. We show that two policy decisions—military intervention in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts—did affect citizens' subsequent political participation, mobilizing the biggest policy w…
Racial Inequality in Democratic Accountability: Evidence from Retrospective Voting in Local Elections
One important and, to date, overlooked component of democratic accountability is the extent to which it might exacerbate existing societal inequalities if the outcomes for some groups of citizens are prioritized over others when voters evaluate governmental performance. We analyze a decade of California school board elections and find evidence that voters reward or punish incumbent board members based on the achievement of white students in their…
Does higher voter turnout among the poor lead to more equal policy representation
The belief that elected officials are most responsive to the opinions of the wealthiest members of society is often assumed but has only recently begun to be tested. This paper examines a common explanation for why this disparity in political representation occurs: wealthy citizens vote at much higher rates than citizens with low incomes. Utilizing variation across states in voter turnout levels among the rich and poor, there is little evidence t…
Democratic Institutions and Subjective Well-Being
We examine how differences in how democracy is institutionalized affect life satisfaction across nations. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous, systematic study of this subject. Using data for 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1981 to 2008, we find robust evidence that citizens report living more satisfying lives in countries with a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, a proport…
Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states
Lobbying Regulations and Political Equality in the American States
Laws that regulate the conduct of professional lobbyists in statehouses across the nation are one attempt to ensure that citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. Do states with stricter lobbying regulations actually display more egalitarian patterns of political representation? Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policies, this articl…
The Political Foundations of the Black–White Education Achievement Gap
More than 50 years after Brown v. Board, African American students continue to trail their White peers on a variety of important educational indicators. In this article, we investigate the political foundations of the racial “achievement gap” in American education. Using variation in high school graduation rates across the states, we first assess whether state policymakers are attentive to the educational needs of struggling African American stud…
Labor Union Membership and Life Satisfaction in the United States
While a voluminous literature examines the effects of organized labor on workers’ wage and benefit levels in the United States, there has been little investigation into whether membership in a labor union directly contributes to a higher quality of life. In this paper, we uncover evidence that union members are more satisfied with their lives than those who are not members and that the substantive effect of union membership on life satisfaction r…
Economic Segregation and Unequal Policy Responsiveness
Ideological proximity, issue importance, and vote choice
State government public goods spending and citizens' quality of life
Racial Differences in Information, Expectations, and Accountability
Citizens contribute to the process of democratic accountability by acquiring information about their elected officials' behavior, comparing this information to their expectations regarding substantive representation, and voting in elections based on the result of this comparison. However, citizens possess varying levels of information about, and different expectations of, Representatives' voting behavior. This raises the possibility that some cit…
Policy, Preferences, and Participation: Government's Impact on Democratic Citizenship
Do government policy decisions impact citizens' involvement in politics? Using panel data, we assess the extent to which variation in levels of political participation among citizens between 2000 and 2004 is linked to the nexus of citizens' preferences and government policy. We show that two policy decisions—military intervention in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts—did affect citizens' subsequent political participation, mobilizing the biggest policy w…
Public Policies and Suicide Rates in the American States
Labor Unions and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from New Data
State Intervention and Subjective Well‐Being in Advanced Industrial Democracies
While there is a vast and contentious literature devoted to the debate over “politics versus markets,” scholars have devoted little empirical attention to the fundamental question of how the choice between these two approaches to public policy affects the overall quality of human life. Contending arguments make powerful claims for the superiority of each as the best mechanism for generating and distributing well‐being. We attempt an empirical app…
From the Schoolhouse to the Statehouse: Teacher Union Political Activism and U.S. State Education Reform Policy
Elementary and secondary education policy making in the U.S. states is heavily influenced by the political bargaining of various actors, with teacher unions one of the most important actors. Yet previous studies that assess the impact of teacher unions on education reform use problematic measures of their direct political influence, instead opting for broader measures of membership or collective bargaining power. By contrast, the authors measure …
How Citizens and Their Legislators Prioritize Spheres of Representation
The authors uncover evidence that citizens’ priorities about various spheres of legislative representation differ across demographic groups and that these differences are subsequently reflected in the in-office behavior of their elected officials. Specifically, African Americans and Latinos are less concerned than whites with policy representation—the attentiveness of elected officials to citizens’ policy preferences—but place more emphasis on th…
Labor union membership and voting across nations
Life Satisfaction and Political Participation: Evidence from the United States
Does higher voter turnout among the poor lead to more equal policy representation
The belief that elected officials are most responsive to the opinions of the wealthiest members of society is often assumed but has only recently begun to be tested. This paper examines a common explanation for why this disparity in political representation occurs: wealthy citizens vote at much higher rates than citizens with low incomes. Utilizing variation across states in voter turnout levels among the rich and poor, there is little evidence t…
Changing Inequality by Rebecca M. Blank
Two Distinct Concepts: Party Competition in Government and Electoral Competition in the American States
American state politics scholars have generally relied on Ranney's measure of the partisan composition of state legislatures and governors' offices to evaluate competition between parties for control of state government, and Holbrook and Van Dunk's measure of the competitiveness of individual state legislative elections to evaluate the degree of electoral competition in a state. Both measure “competition” and were previously correlated with one a…
Income Inequality and Policy Representation in the American States
Government representation of public opinion is a central component of democracy. Previous studies have documented a robust congruence between aggregated public opinion and public policies in the American states. However, an equally important question for evaluating the quality of democracy is “Who does government respond to when formulating public policies?” I investigate differential policy representation based on citizens’ household incomes and…
Religion and Government Corruption in the American States
One way to measure the quality of government is to assess the extent to which political officials are corrupt (i.e., use their public office for private gain). This study presents a set of theoretical expectations for why states with a larger proportion of religious citizens will have lower levels of government corruption and then tests this proposition using cross-sectional data from the American states. Despite reasons to expect otherwise, the …
Assessing the Impact of the Size and Scope of Government on Human Well-Being
We examine how public policies affect life satisfaction across the industrial democracies. We consider as indicators of policy overall levels of government spending, the size and generosity of the welfare state, and the degree of labor market regulation. Using individual- and aggregate-level data for OECD countries from 1981 to 2007, we find robust evidence that citizens find life more satisfying as the degree of government intervention in the ec…
The Political Foundations of the Black–White Education Achievement Gap
More than 50 years after Brown v. Board, African American students continue to trail their White peers on a variety of important educational indicators. In this article, we investigate the political foundations of the racial “achievement gap” in American education. Using variation in high school graduation rates across the states, we first assess whether state policymakers are attentive to the educational needs of struggling African American stud…
Direct Democracy and Political Equality in the American States
Objectives This study investigates the relationship between direct democracy and the equality of opinion‐policy representation in the American states. Methods Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policy outputs, I generate an index of the equality of political representation (based on citizens’ incomes) that is comparable across the states. I then evaluate the relationship between different …
American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter
If you asked 100 people to define “democracy,” you might receive 100 different answers. The bulk of those answers, however, would likely make some reference to laws or institutions such as popular elections, guaranteed civil liberties, or limits on government power. In his book, Andrew J. Perrin instead adopts a sociological approach and reminds the reader that democratic culture (the norms and practices that citizens establish for interacting wi…
Campaign Finance Laws, Policy Outcomes, and Political Equality in the American States
Laws that regulate the financing of campaigns are one attempt to attenuate the role of money in politics and promote more egalitarian policy outcomes. Do states with stricter campaign finance regulations represent citizens’ interests more equally? Using data on state spending priorities from 1977 to 2008, this article finds that states with stricter campaign finance laws devote a larger proportion of their annual budget to public welfare spending…
When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization
Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Explo…
Lobbying Regulations and Political Equality in the American States
Laws that regulate the conduct of professional lobbyists in statehouses across the nation are one attempt to ensure that citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. Do states with stricter lobbying regulations actually display more egalitarian patterns of political representation? Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policies, this articl…
Labor Union Membership and Life Satisfaction in the United States
While a voluminous literature examines the effects of organized labor on workers’ wage and benefit levels in the United States, there has been little investigation into whether membership in a labor union directly contributes to a higher quality of life. In this paper, we uncover evidence that union members are more satisfied with their lives than those who are not members and that the substantive effect of union membership on life satisfaction r…
Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states
The State of the Minimum Wage: Federalism, Economic Policy, and Workers’ Well-Being
In this essay, we contribute to the growing national discussion about the future of minimum wage policy and its implications for working class Americans. First, we discuss the politics of the minimum wage in the United States, with special attention to the sizable and rich variation across the fifty American states and the importance of federalism. Second, we examine competing theoretical arguments (and, when available, empirical evidence) about …
Democratic Institutions and Subjective Well-Being
We examine how differences in how democracy is institutionalized affect life satisfaction across nations. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous, systematic study of this subject. Using data for 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1981 to 2008, we find robust evidence that citizens report living more satisfying lives in countries with a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, a proport…
Political science (43 works) · Politics (37 works) · Law (34 works) · Law (28 works) · Economics (27 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (25 works) · Political economy (21 works) · Public Administration (19 works) · Democracy (17 works) · Public Administration (15 works)