Applying the New Federalism of 1996: Governors and Welfare Reform

In 1996, when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law, President Bill Clinton made a promise to Americans to 'end welfare as we know it.' However, with the devolution of welfare authority from the national government to the states, the type of welfare system that Americans would come to know under TANF would not only look different compared to the national AFDC programs of the past but would vary significantly from one state to the next. A number of explanations have been offered to account for this variation, but few have focused on the impact of the state itself and the institutions and individuals that govern state action. In an attempt to fill this scholarly void, this project seeks to examine the relationship between measures of gubernatorial power and welfare policy outcomes across the fifty states from 1996-1999. Using a variety of measures of gubernatorial power, results of quantitative tests relating to a number of key policy choices, and the ability of states to achieve identified goals relating to these policy options, indicate that the state executive power does play a significant role in determining policy formulation and implementation in the states. Finally, the project concludes with recommendations for future institutional research into state-level public policy studies.