Content Analysis Part 1

Kamwren Nichols
Dr. Nathan Meyers

Research Question and Objective It has been widely reported in the media that the US financial crisis of 2008 has had a detrimental impact on states budgets, mostly due to revenue shortfalls stemming from high unemployment rates and increased reliance on government assistance programs. Few, if any, studies have attempted to test which political party was better at addressing the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis on state budgets, with independent and dependent measures. This content analysis will be used to derive relevant testable variables (McNabb, 85) to determine if a reliable relationship exists between them that can answer the question: Which political partys agenda was more responsive to state budget issues created by the 2008 financial crisis? The answer to this question is important to political leaders because if this analysis reveals that there was indeed a significant disparity of attention to critical economic issues by one political party, affiliate politicians may want to evaluate how they could better respond in the future and if there are policies they can implement, to mitigate the impact of financial crisis to state budgets. Literature Review A literature review of other studies related to the financial crisis and state budget agendas was conducted to provide a framework for establishing the importance of this study (Creswell, 25). The review is conducted in two parts; the first examines the budgetary issues states are facing and the second is a review of studies previously conducted on gubernatorial agenda setting.

States are Facing Budget Issues The review begins with an article by Brian Galle & Kirk Stark published in the Indiana Law Journal (2012). The article makes the case that states need to maintain a rainy day fund because budget cuts tend to be steepest in social safety net programs (Galle and Kirk, 600), which causes low-income households to be most affected by state budget shortfalls in the wake of the financial crisis. States should plan for times of economic uncertainty because governments at all levels face a mismatch between inflows and outflows (Galle and Kirk, 604). The article recommends that states modify their budget agendas to save excess revenues during times of prosperity instead of using those revenues to increase government programs. This would allow states to maintain a similar level of spending during times of recession. Eckstein (2009) reports on severe deficits in state universities defined benefit pension programs as a result of the market downturn from the 2008 financial crisis, A pension system in Missouri that covers professors at many of the state's regional colleges dropped in value by about $2-billion in 2008 (Eckstein, 24). This problem is compounded by the fact that states are also facing large deficits themselves and are decreasing funding to universities. This could leave states trying to find money to pay pensions on a budget that is already strained but the state legislatures are ultimately responsible for ensuring that public colleges' pension systems contain enough money to pay retiree benefits(Eckstein, 24). This has some governors scrambling to find a solution to keep pension payments flowing, Ed Rendell as warned that Penn State University may need to increase its contributions

to the State Employees' Retirement System (Eckstein, 25) to help offset the pension deficit. Hill (2009) examines the deteriorating fiscal conditions of states in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and recommends that states overhaul their tax systems through combined income reporting, monitoring of tax breaks by corporations, and review of personal income rates and brackets (Hill, 8). Hill also mentions that there are nine states that pay no personal property tax (Hill, 9) and says that those states should look at implementing a personal property tax, as an additional source of revenue. She also proposed revenue boosters, which included raising fines on environmental violations and implementing carbon emissions tax on citizens. Hill understands that these are radical measures but that states should be looking for revenue anywhere they can get it. These proposed policies would be highly unpopular with voters so it is unlikely that state legislators would be eager to put them on the agenda. Cavanagh (2011) reports that state governors are using the economic downturn in as a catalyst to reform school programs to become more efficient saying it's not unusual during tough financial times for state leaders to pledge to scour budgets, including school budgets, in search of bloat (Cavanagh, 22). The article explains the different strategies political leaders are taking to cut down on education spending such as raising class sizes slightly and putting financial savings from that move into new technology, higher teacher pay, and other areas (Cavanagh, 22). The article also highlights that this is a major budget agenda item for Democrats and Republicans alike because the mood of the country now is

focused on dealing with deficits, dealing with spending. People want efficiency now (Cavanaugh, 22). Mattoon (2011) criticizes state governments for failing to adequately respond to the financial crisis saying, state governments were absent in contributing to the nationwide economic recovery (Mattoon, 1). He accuses states of having poor budget planning and being unprepared to properly handle the issues theyre experiencing as a result of the recession. Mattoon recommends that sates make their budgets more transparent so average citizens can see how much money is being retained in the state governments public purse (Mattoon, 4). He also mentions that the Federal Reserve could assist states with doing economic research to help states get on the right path to being able to better respond to the fallout from the latest financial crisis and to be better prepared for ones in the future. Johnson and McNichol (2009) warn, state responses to the recession could slow the recovery (Johnson and McNichol, 1). Johnson and McNichol stress that states are facing tremendous budget deficits due to decreased income tax revenues from high unemployment. The problem is compounded by high foreclosure rates, which reduces property tax revenue for local governments. Another issue is decreased sales tax revenue since consumers are spending less. Johnson and McNichol recommend that states raise taxes on wealthier individuals to reduce budget gaps. Political leaders however, are reluctant to propose tax increases in the midst of such poor economic conditions but Johnson and McNichol say that reluctance to take action to address budget shortfalls would seriously threaten important services (Johnson and McNichol, 8) provided by states.

Heintz (2009) says that since most states are required to maintain balanced budgets they cannot run deficits to keep spending levels the same during times of reduced revenue. This also prevents states from engaging in long term borrowing (Heintz, 8), like the federal government does. He says that most states must reduce their spending which involves cutting public sector employees. This strategy further compounds the issue of high unemployment. Heintz states that a major vulnerability to state budgets is that major sources of revenues are highly sensitive to prevailing economic conditions (Heintz, 11). To deal with state budget gaps, Heintz recommends that states receive intergovernmental transfers from the federal government (Heintz, 13) via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Heintz also recommends that a better budget system is needed that can weather the ebbs and flows of the national economy, to avoid essential public services being cut (Heintz, 13). Studies on Gubernatorial Agenda Setting Taylor (2009) says, several studies have examined whether stronger institutional powers enhance a governor's legislative success (Taylor, 1). Taylor analyzes budget agendas from state governors and theorizes that the more appointment power, veto authority, and tenure potential (Taylor, 1) a governor has, the more aggressive their budget agendas will be. Taylors findings indicate that strong governors do propose larger agendas than weak governors (Taylor, 1) and Taylor wanted to expand his study to include an analysis of gubernatorial resources such as staff to determine if more capable staffs are able to assist governors propose more aggressive agendas.

Burden and Sandberg (2003) recognize that voters are mostly concerned with whether the government is in surplus or deficit (Burden and Sandberg, 98). Burden and Sandberg analyzed budget rhetoric and observed that rhetoric varies in at least two ways: volume and tone (Burden and Sandberg) so they developed a test to examine the relationship to if there was a correlation between the status of the budget and the tone and volume. The test concluded, Democrats emphasize the budget more when it is in surplus, while Republicans volume is greatest when the budget is in deficit (Burden and Sandberg, 115). They also concluded that the tone would depend on the speakers partisanship, which means politicians tend to be more critical of the incumbent partys management of the budget. Coffey (2009) conducted a content analysis to measure the ideology of state governors based on political party affiliation (Coffey, 1). Coffeys medium of analysis was state of the state speeches from 2000 to 2001. He was able to measure ideology by coding each sentence of the speeches as either liberal or conservative, then after taking the difference between the number of liberal and conservative sentences, he divided them by the total number of sentences to determine the governors ideologies. Coffey concluded that content analysis of content analysis of state of the state speeches could provide a valid and reliable indicator of gubernatorial ideology (Coffey, 100). Some of the limitations he experienced in his conclusion were whether or not the ideology measured in the speeches, actually correlated with legislative actions of the same ideology being implemented.

Herrera and Shafer (2012) conducted a content analysis to measure how U.S. governors policy agendas change over time (Herrera and Shafer, 1). They analyzed state of the state speeches from 1991 to 2012. They limited the agenda items to be measured to health, social welfare, education and economic issues. Their findings indicate that overall, governors pay much more attention to education and economic issues as compared to health and social welfare (Herrera and Shafer, 16), based off the rhetoric of their state of the state speeches. They also note that gubernatorial attention to economic policy trends consistently upwards from the recession of 2008 (Herrera and Shafer, 17). Heidbreder (2012) examines the variables that impact gubernatorial agenda setting and determines that agenda attention is a function of a number of policy demand indicators, including gubernatorial party identification, and state legislative party control (Heidbreder, 1). She observes that political parties respond differently to social and economic issues and that state level agenda setting is a complicated process (Heidbreder, 1). From his literature review its clear that governors are facing significant challenges on how to deal with state revenue decreases and consequential spending cuts in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The literature review also determined that different political parties take different approaches to agenda setting and different parties are influenced by different variables. The review, reveals that economic issues are high on the agenda for most governors but can it be determined if one party has done a better job of managing their state through this economic downturn?

Statement of Theory Conventional wisdom about the agendas of Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are better at managing economic issues while Democrats are more in tune to address social concerns. The financial crisis however, presented complex issues to political leaders that required them to address both social and economic issues. Using the conclusion from Burden and Sandbergs study that Republicans volume is greatest when the budget is in deficit (Burden and Sandberg, 115), I theorize that Republican governors will do a better job of addressing state budget issues than Democrats since many states after the financial crisis are experiencing budget shortfalls. Also, Republicans are not shy about cutting public sector jobs, which was what many states had to do in the wake of the financial crisis. Democrats on the other hand, tend to raise taxes to address budget issues but it would have been extremely unpopular to do so since states residents were already experiencing financial hardships. I dont expect to see Democrats touting tax hikes as part of their agenda. Description of Data and Methods The medium I will use for this content analysis will be 12 gubernatorial budget speeches from 2009. The year 2009 was when the effects of the financial crisis were starting to be felt in state budgets and I would expect the rhetoric from the governors budget speeches to address issues caused by the financial crisis. I will randomly select speeches from 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats. There were no incumbent U.S. governors of a third party during 2009. I will code individual paragraphs to be used as my unit of analysis. I intend to code paragraphs into two

categories, which are: (addresses budget issues related to financial crisis) and (addresses other issues). I will code the paragraphs manually without the aid of a text analyzer to reduce error from taking phrases out of context. I will use the coded paragraphs from the speeches to determine a governors budget agenda (BA). I will measure (BA) by the difference between (addresses budget issues related to financial crisis) and (addresses other issues) divided by total number of each type of paragraph in the speech. BA= (addresses budget issues related to financial crisis)- (addresses other issues) (addresses budget issues related to financial crisis)+(addresses other issues) Utilizing this formula will produce a range from (1) to (-1). (1) being all paragraphs address budget issues relating to the financial crisis and (-1) being all paragraphs address other issues. I will then take the measurements from this formula and use them as the dependent variable (BA) to conduct a statistical analysis in SPSS that will determine if there is a relationship between the dependent variable (BA) and the independent variable, which I will call political party (PP), which will support my theory that Republicans were more responsive to state budget issues caused by the financial crisis of 2008.

Bibliography Burden, Barry C., and Joseph Neal Rice Sanberg. "Budget Rhetoric in Presidential Campaigns from 1952 to 2000." Political Behavior 25, no. 2 (June 2003): 97118. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Cavanagh, Sean. "Fiscal Plights Leveraged For Governors' Agendas. (cover story)." Education Week 30, no. 19 (February 2, 2011): 1. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Coffey, Daniel. "Measuring Gubernatorial Ideology: A Content Analysis of State of the State Speeches." State Politics & Policy Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Spring2005 2005): 88-103. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Creswell, John W. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 2012. Eckstein, Megan. "Pension Shortfalls Put Pressure on Strained University Budgets." Chronicle Of Higher Education 55, no. 23 (February 13, 2009): A24. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Galle, Brian, and Kirk J. Stark. "Beyond Bailouts: Federal Tools for Preventing State Budget Crises." Indiana Law Journal 87, no. 2 (Spring2012 2012): 599644. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Heidbreder, Brianne. "Agenda Setting in the States: How Politics and Policy Needs Shape Gubernatorial Agendas." Politics & Policy 40, no. 2 (April 2012): 296319. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Heintz, James. "THE GRIM STATE OF THE STATES: The Fiscal Crisis Facing State and Local Governments." New Labor Forum (Murphy Institute) 18, no. 2 (Spring2009 2009): 6-15. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost(accessed March 1, 2013). Herrera, Richard and Shafer, Karen, Governors Policy Agendas Over the Long Haul: State Priorities in a National Context (2012). APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper. Hill, Marianne. "State Budget Blues." Dollars & Sense no. 285 (November 2009): 8. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). Johnson, Janet Buttolph, Richard A. Joslyn, and Henry T. Reynolds. Political science research methods. Cq Press, 1995.

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Mattoon, Richard H. "State budgets under stress: Paths to sustainability." Chicago Fed Letter no. 291b (October 3, 2011): 1. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013). McNabb, David E. Research methods in public administration and nonprofit management: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. ME Sharpe Inc, 2008. McNichol, Elizabeth and Nicholas Johnson "Recession continues to batter state budgets; state responses could slow recovery." Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (2009). Taylor, Charles D. "Gubernatorial Powers and Economic Development: Are Strong Governors Bold Governors?." Conference Papers -- Southern Political Science Association (2009 Annual Meeting 2009): 1-51. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 1, 2013).

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