Nationalization and Its Consequences for State Legislatures

Abstract

Objective I theorize that as nationalization increases, state legislatures will take less legislative actions related to local topics and take more legislative actions on divisive, national issues. Method To measure nationalization I use election data as well as data on mass partisanship in a state. To measure a state's legislative agenda, I use data on legislative actions collected from LexisNexis. For my statistical analysis, I use two‐way linear fixed effects regression. Results I find that as nationalization increases, legislatures take less legislative actions pertaining to education, transportation, and localities. I also find that as nationalization increases, Republican‐controlled states increase the number of legislative actions related to abortion. Conclusion Taken together, the article provides evidence that nationalization delocalizes the agenda and places on the agenda issues associated with the national partisan conflict.