Replication Data for: How Bureaucratic Leadership Shapes Policy Outcomes: Partisan Politics and Affluent Citizens’ Incomes in the American States

We maintain that political institutions’ policy objectives are best met under conditions when they are unified, and also when their administrative leadership is effective. We apply this argument for understanding how unified Democratic and Republican governments in the American states have influenced incomes of affluent citizens. We find that affluent income gains occur under unified Republican state governments when compensation to executive agency heads is sufficiently high. These income gains are notable relative to both divided and unified partisan control of state governments. The evidence highlights the asymmetric role that bureaucratic leadership exerts for attaining policy outcomes consistent with political institutions’ policy preferences, while underscoring the limits of electoral institutions to shape policy outcomes of their own accord. Efforts at lowering the capacity of the administrative leadership constrains unified political institutions from converting their policy objectives into policy outcomes.