Democratic Backsliding and the Balance Wheel Hypothesis: Partisanship and State Funding for Higher Education in the United States

Autor/inn/en	Taylor, Barrett J.; Kunkle, Kelsey; Watts, Kimberly
Titel	Democratic Backsliding and the Balance Wheel Hypothesis: Partisanship and State Funding for Higher Education in the United States
Quelle	In: Higher Education Policy, 36 (2023) 4, S.781-803 (23 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Kunkle, Kelsey)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0952-8733
DOI	10.1057/s41307-022-00286-w
Schlagwörter	Higher Education; State Aid; Political Attitudes; State Policy; Educational Policy; Psychological Patterns + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Political attitude; Politische Einstellung; Politics of education; Bildungspolitik
Abstract	The balance wheel hypothesis--a classic tenet of USA state-level policy analysis that suggests state funding for higher education varies in response to macroeconomic cycles--has held up to scrutiny over time. However, new social conditions within the Republican Party, namely growing hostility toward independent institutions, call for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between state budgets and higher education. Drawing on recent research in political science and political economy, we conceptualize declining state appropriations to higher education in Republican-dominated U.S. states as an instance of democratic backsliding. Using a panel of state-level data we found that political partisanship conditioned state appropriations to higher education during and after the Great Recession. Our finding that the balance wheel operated differently in states with and without unified Republican control not only suggests partisan hostility toward higher education is a potentially worrisome indicator of democratic backsliding, but also the importance of updating models to consider the extent to which they still hold as contexts change over time. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01