U.S. State Governments Are Not Leviathans: Evidence from the Economic Freedom Index * Noel D. Campbell, University of Central Arkansas David T. Mitchell, University of Central Arkansas Objective. Does increasing a political party’s power lead to Leviathan state govern- ments? The evidence is mixed. We use the Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) Index to measure governmental activity to study the impact of political parties on government outcomes. Methods. We employ instrumental-variable, panel data methods to regress states’ EFNA scores on median voter and differentiated-party variables. Results. Party effects are negligible, but a simple median voter explanation emerges. Conclusion. As political power is consolidated in either party, economic freedom increases. This is consistent with a model wherein the median voter has effective agency control with positive monitoring costs and prefers a particular level of so-called economic freedom. These results are inconsistent with Leviathan models of state legislatures. The size of government has increased dramatically across all measures in the last 100 years. Hobbes ([1651] 2009) labeled an ever-expanding government that swallows everything up as a Leviathan, using the name of a sea monster from the Book of Job. Brennan and Buchanan (1980) operationalized the definition of Leviathan as an ever-growing government that is larger than the median voter desires. In spite of the median voter model, which suggests that governments from either party will hew to the size of government favored by the median voter, some researchers suggest that governments are ever- expanding Leviathans. Other researchers have found that government will expand more with a Democratic majority than with a Republican majority. Yet the literature offers weak and often inconclusive results concerning the impact of political parties on government spending and tax burden (Caplan, 2001; Gilligan and Matsusaka, 1999; Blais, Blake, and Dion, 1993; Garand, 1988; Dye, 1984). This article looks at the relationship between political party and the size of state government. ∗ Direct correspondence to Noel Campbell, Associate Professor of Economics, EFIRM, College of Business, University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey, Conway, AR 72035 〈ncampbell@uca.edu〉. We thank the anonymous referees, as well as Jennifer Wang and the seminar group at the College of Charleston. The authors will share all data and code upon request. SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 92, Number 4, December 2011 C  2011 by the Southwestern Social Science Association DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00804.x