Administrator Political Orientations and Views on Federal Encroachment

Does a public administrator’s political orientation color how they perceive the actions and activities of the federal government? Recent studies have focused on examining this question with respect to the general public, but not administrators directly – leaving our understanding of these effects nascent. Using a long-running national survey, I measure the impact of state administrators’ party identification and ideology on several measures of federal encroachment. I find that self-identified Democratic and liberal administrators are less likely to believe that the federal government is encroaching on state actions and hold more positive evaluations of encroachment when it occurs, compared to other administrators. Additionally, I find that these beliefs are conditioned on the composition of the federal government, with the largest differences occurring under a Democratic-controlled White House and Congress.