Resumen de Institutional Variation, Professionalization, and State Implementation Choices: An Examination of Investment in Water Quality Across the 50 States

Ryan D. Williamson, John C. Morris, Jonathan M. Fisk

• The question of the effect of administrative arrangements on program administration and program outcomes is a central question for those interested in policy implementation. In the implementation of federal programs, the specific state-level administrative arrangements can have a significant impact not only on resource distribution patterns, but also on the ability of involved agencies to secure adequate state resources for the program. This paper addresses this question through the lens of the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund program designed to fund water quality infrastructure. Employing a dataset covering nearly thirty years of state-level data, we find that measures of administrative structure and state capability are more powerful explanators of state resource decisions than are more standard explanations of politics, needs, and ideology.