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Date of Graduation

5-2025

Description

Since their earliest iterations in the New Deal, entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and welfare programs have served as a political third rail, but concerns over their administration, budgets, and fit into the mandate of the national government can conflict with the political necessity of maintaining them. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps, is a prime example of a welfare entitlement that many Americans rely on to meet their regular nutrition needs. Similar concerns about waste, methods of administration, and budget constraints crop up every time the program comes up for reauthorization in the United States Congress. This case study of the SNAP program will take a critical look at both data and policy changes nationally and state-side since 1989 and analyze disconnects between SNAP’s intent stated by the federal government and program administration on the state level. The theory employed in the analysis understands the administrative relationship between states as the agents and the national government as the principal. These two administrative roles create an asymmetry that requires the principal to determine a level of discrepancy balanced with trust in the agent to exercise a specific mandate. The data-based analysis considers changes in political control, significant alterations of SNAP policies, and other regional shifts as potential causal factors in total enrollment, benefit distribution and dispersals, and error or waste data. The policy change analysis will similarly trace these causal factors as features of political changes in policy design, executive adjustments, or support for policy action. Preliminary data analysis has indicated that political alignment of state governments, particularly among governors, plays a significant role in which policies a state adopts and how rapidly the state administration aligns with that policy. The implications of this research serve to explore an infrequently studied administrative relationship between state and national governments as well as the use of state governments as a platform for partisan resistance to a national agenda.

Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Book

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

History

Advisor/Mentor

Schreckhise, Bill

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Social Science

State Governments' SNAP Administration against the National Mandate: Principal-Agent Theory Case Study

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