{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023156899810964082, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0023629489603024575, 'mean_word_length': 4.8319559228650135, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The European Left and the Financial Crisis

quantitative analysis is exacting and, in my mind, convincing. Grossmann also deserves high marks for data presentation, relying on imaginative figures rather than on endless columns of regression coefficients. The end result is not only a persuasive case but an engaging read. Grossmann also asks about the impact of partisan control on outcome measures. That is, what difference does it make in people’s lives to live in a red state or a blue state? He reviews a sprawling literature on policy effects and finds rather nuanced evaluations. Research that shows strong partisan effects on one policy indicates nothing about impact on another. On the economy the findings are mixed. Although the research on the national economy shows “better economic performance under Democratic presidents. . . the state-level literature does not reach a firm conclusion advantaging either party on economic performance.” He adds, “The President has many more tools to affect the economy than governors” (p. 122). Grossmann is effective in connecting his own research to the broader comparative state politics literature. There is a great deal of work that has been done on policy differences among the states and his findings fit well with this research. At the same time, it seemed liked he could have reached further into other realms of study on policy making. I wondered about the scholarship on incrementalism, which provides considerable insight into the dynamics he describes. More recently, Baumgartner and Jones’ theory of punctuated equilibrium is also relevant. In this regard it was not clear to me if Baumgartner and Jones’ view of policymaking is compatible with Grossmann’s. This is a book well worth reading and it is one that’s likely to cause readers to think hard about how party control affects public policy. Red and blue states do differ considerably in general attitudes on the proper role of government, but what Grossmann finds is that the Republican revolution failed because the party could not “override the build-up of decades of policy liberalism” (p. 77).