Applying regression discontinuity designs to American political development
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Applying regression discontinuity designs to American political development Anna Harvey1 Received: 11 July 2019 / Accepted: 18 July 2019 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Students of American political development (APD) have long been interested in questions related to the development of “state capacity” in the United States. The apparent macrolevel nature of those questions may appear to discourage the pursuit of micro-level causal inferences. Yet attention to causal inference is not necessarily incompatible with inquiry into macro-level phenomena. This article explores the application of a specific causal inference strategy, namely regression discontinuity design (RDD), to three questions of interest to APD scholars of state capacity. First, the article illustrates the use of a geographic RDD to estimate the causal impacts of a Reconstruction-era federal civil rights statute during the period prior to the development of significant federal state capacity. Second, it explores the possible causes of the late 19th century decline in the use of monetary rewards to motivate civil servants by using a population-based RDD to estimate the causal impacts of financial incentives on law enforcement effort and civilian compliance. Third, it illustrates an opportunity to test claims about the impacts of the growth of the “carceral state” by applying a resource-constraint RDD to estimate the causal impacts of law enforcement effort on a variety of outcomes. Keywords Labor discrimination · Public policy · Criminal law JEL Classification J7 · J78 · K14
1 Introduction Scholars who study American political development (APD) often are distinguished by their interests in historical perspective and macro-level questions. In the Introduction to the recently published Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, Suzanne Mettler and Richard Valelly (2016, p. 4) observe that the field’s “wide-angle lens” may be interpreted by some to necessitate assigning lesser weight to questions of causal inference than is typical in the social sciences: among those who study APD, “the reliability of the proposed causal inferences is not taken as utterly primary.” Mettler and Valelly suggest * Anna Harvey [email protected] 1
Department of Politics, New York University, New York, USA
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that placing lesser weight on questions of causal inference may be appropriate in the APD research community, given the community’s commitment to macro-level questions that may not feasibly be addressed by typical causal inference techniques. Yet attention to causal inference is not necessarily incompatible with a commitment to answering macro-level questions. That claim is here illustrated in the context of questions asked by APD scholars about the development of “state capacity”, or the growth of a salaried and merit-based federal bureaucracy capable of competently administering programs of social provision (Skowronek 1982; Evans et al. 1985; Carpenter 2001). State capa
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