Highways to American social democracy: Motor fuel tax trends and policies

The United States has been subject to social democratic influences upon politics and policy, but these have remained largely unobserved, and cultural impacts upon transportation policy remain surprisingly little studied. Although state fuel tax rates vary and have continually increased, this important revenue source has escaped tax revolts. Revenues were traditionally dedicated to building highway infrastructure, a liberal approach that contrasts with France's centralized social democratic model, where fuel tax revenues become generally treasury funds. Recently, some convergence has occurred, with U.S. revenues being increasingly diverted to other uses.;This research seeks to assess the existence and influence of social democracy, in its federal and state manifestations, on federal and state motor fuel tax and highway finance policy. Is social democracy an important influence? This study (1) presents a modern understanding of social democracy within the confines of capitalism; (2) develops a composite social democracy index applicable to the American states; (3) uses this tool to assess the roles of social democracy and other factors in shaping the evolution of policy processes and outcomes; (4) estimates social democracy's impact on state tax rates using time series with two interventions ARIMA; and (5) using multiple regression statistical procedures, estimates how various socio-political forces have in the 1990s to fuel tax policy outcomes. The results show that (a) American social democracy exists, that it has empirical indicators, and that one can rank states along this dimension, with Northern and Western states being more social democratic than Southern ones; (b) social democracy has played a role in federal fuel tax and highway finance policy evolution; and (c) at the federal level, social democracy has positive impact upon state motor fuel tax rates, while state social democracy shows negative contribution to state motor fuel tax revenue and positive contribution to motor user diversion funds. That is, state policy is influenced by federal social democracy and by state social democracy. Social democracy is both positively and negatively associated with various hypothesized state variables linked to opposing forces along the political spectrum and with motor user policy outputs. The author hopes that these findings will help to open a new and virtually untraveled path for political research.