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While the dynamics of trust in the national government have been shown to be responsive to political events and governmental performance, less is known about why the public's trust in U.S. state and local government rises and falls over time. We examine the trends in confidence in subnational government using an aggregate level approach. First, we consider whether levels of trust are defined by reactions to the national government. Second, we consider how factors specific to subnational politics such as governmental performance and the quality of community life influence trust. Using measures of confidence in state and local government from 1968 to 2004 and a set of error correction models, we find evidence for both accounts. Confidence in subnational governments reflects national trends such as economic tides and public preferences for more or less government, but also exhibits unique dynamics explained by factors specific to subnational politics.

Does the disposition of public opinion affect the progressivism of public policy? While scholars devote a significant amount of attention to opinion-policy linkages at the national, state, and even county levels in such a manner, a similarly defined relationship in local domains remains untested. In this research note, the author offers an alternative for understanding local representation through an investigation of the relationship between the public's ideology and government spending patterns in twenty-six urban areas across multiple policy areas. The results indicate that the ideological preferences of citizens are reflected in the spending decisions of governments.

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Do agency officials hold influence over the policy decisions made by state legislators and governors? For years, scholars have asserted the important informational role that bureaucrats play within the U.S. policy-making process. However, we have only limited knowledge of the theoretical mechanisms that may allow for this influence, or ultimately, whether this influence matters to public policy outcomes. We theorize that the political oversight of the bureaucracy by elected officials not only constrains the bureaucracy but also provides a pathway for agency officials to advance their preferences by communicating their policy expertise. We assess this argument with survey data from almost 600 state agency heads, drawn from the 50 states and across all agency types. Using a multilevel model, we find that the "oversight mechanism" is a key driver of agency influence over gubernatorial policy decisions; however, it does a poor job explaining agency policy influence within state legislatures. These results suggest that oversight allows agency leaders greater success in lobbying governors than more diffuse and diverse state legislatures.