New Books In Public Policy

In his book Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Matt Grossmann examines, first, the watershed event of Republican takeovers of governors’ offices and state houses over the past twenty or so years. He then, through a triangular model, explores what actually happened in terms of policy outcomes and directional changes based on this political shift. What Grossmann finds, which might be a bit surprising, is that, overall, the size of state governments was not reduced under conservative leadership. He also finds that state government spending was not substantially reduced either. Grossmann argues that the policy outcomes did not necessarily match the political rhetoric on which Republicans campaigned to achieve these statewide offices. Red State Blues provides a systematic examination of policies passed across statehouses during the course of the last twenty-five years and finds that there are some gains made in regard to passage of socially co