Responsiveness in American Local Governments

Palus, Christine Kelleher

doi:10.1177/0160323x10365847

Cited by 56 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…2 A number of studies have found an association between public opinion and local fiscal policies in cities (Tausanovitch and Warshaw, 2014;Einstein and Kogan, 2015;Palus, 2010) and counties Percival, Johnson, and Neiman, 2009;Ybarra and Krebs, 2016). While there has been an active debate about the e↵ect of municipal o cials' partisanship on local fiscal policies (e.g., Ferreira and Gyourko, 2009;Gerber and Hopkins, 2011), recent work shows that mayoral partisanship has an important e↵ect on policy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Warshaw

Benedictis-Kessner

2020

The Journal of Politics

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County governments are a crucial component of the fabric of American democracy. Yet there has been almost no previous research on the policy e↵ects of the partisan composition of county governments. Most counties in the United States have small legislatures, usually called commissions or councils, that set their budgets and other policies. In this study, we examine whether counties with Democratic legislators spend more than counties with Republican ones. We assemble an original dataset of 10,708 elections in approximately 298 medium and large counties over the past 25 years. Based on a regression discontinuity design, we find that electing a Democratic legislator rather than a Republican one leads the average county to increase spending by about 5%. Overall, our findings contribute to a growing literature on the policy consequences of partisan control of state and local government. They show that the partisan selection of county legislators has important policy e↵ects in county governments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Warshaw

Benedictis-Kessner

2020

The Journal of Politics

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“…A number of recent studies have found that municipal policy outcomes are responsive to the opinion and partisanship of the mass public (Einstein and Kogan, 2015;Palus, 2010;Tausanovitch and Warshaw, 2014). More liberal cities spend substantially more than conservatives cities and levy higher taxes on their citizens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mayoral Partisanship and Municipal Fiscal Policy

Benedictis-Kessner

Warshaw

2016

The Journal of Politics

150

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Does it matter for municipal fiscal policies which party controls the mayorship in municipal government? The bulk of the existing evidence says no. But there are a variety of theoretical reasons to believe that mayoral partisanship should affect municipal policy outcomes. In this paper, we examine this question using data on nearly 1000 elections in medium and large cities over the past 60 years. In contrast to previous work, we find that mayoral partisanship has a significant impact on the size of municipal government. Overall, Democratic mayors spend more than Republican mayors. The bulk of this additional spending comes on roads, housing, libraries, and interest. We find a modest impact of mayoral partisanship on city tax levels. However, Democratic mayors issue substantially more debt than Republican ones. They also spend much more to service interest on debt. Our findings show that mayoral partisanship matters for city policy. Moreover, our findings add to a growing literature indicating that the constraints imposed on city policymaking do not prevent public opinion and elections from having a meaningful impact on municipal policy.

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“…Recent work, however, suggests that the long‐held conventional wisdom was wrong and that cities are often responsive to the ideology and partisanship of the residents they serve. A number of articles have found that local governments may be more responsive to resident ideological preferences than previously thought (Einstein & Kogan, 2016; Gerber, 2013; Palus, 2010; Switzer, 2019a; Tausanovitch & Warshaw, 2014). Einstein and Kogan (2016) developed a dataset of municipal level partisanship using precinct‐level election data from the 2008 election in order to investigate the effect of local resident partisanship on municipal policy.…”

Section: Municipal Responsiveness To Residentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Context of Responsiveness: Resident Preferences, Water Scarcity, and Municipal Conservation Policy

Switzer

2020

Review of Policy Research

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The extent to which municipal policy is determined by the preferences of residents is a topic of growing importance. Recent work on the subject has challenged conventional wisdom and found that municipal policy is often, but not always, responsive to the ideology of residents. This paper takes up an important potential implication of these findings, exploring how resident ideology may interact with issue severity in the adoption of municipal policy. Hypotheses suggest that resident preferences will have the greatest effect in the presence of high issue severity and that issue severity will have the largest impact when residents have ideological preferences in line with policy solutions. I test hypotheses using municipal water rates, with models showing that the effects of resident ideology and water scarcity interact with each other to influence water conservation policy.自治区政策在多大程度上由居民偏好所决定，这是一个越来越重要的话题。近期有关该主题的研究挑战了传统看法，发现自治区政策时常对其居民的思想予以响应。本文从这些研究发现的一个潜在意义出发，探究在采纳自治区政策时居民思想可能如何与议题严重性产生相互影响。假设认为，居民偏好将在议题严重性较高时发挥最大效果，并且议题严重性将在居民思想偏好与政策解决措施相一致时发挥最大影响。我以自治区水费为例检验了假设，模型显示，居民思想和水资源匮乏二者产生相互作用，进而影响节水政策。关键词: 城市研究, 环境, 治理, 区域治理 La medida en que la política municipal está determinada por las preferencias de los residentes es un tema de creciente importancia. El trabajo reciente sobre el tema ha desafiado la sabiduría convencional y ha encontrado que la política municipal a menudo, pero no siempre, responde a la ideología de sus residentes. Este documento aborda una importante implicación potencial de estos hallazgos, explorando cómo la ideología de los residentes puede interactuar con la gravedad del problema en la adopción de la política municipal. Las hipótesis sugieren que las preferencias de los residentes tendrán el mayor efecto en presencia de una alta gravedad del problema y que la gravedad del problema tendrá el mayor impacto cuando los residentes tengan preferencias ideológicas en línea con las soluciones políticas. Pruebo hipótesis utilizando tarifas de agua municipales, con modelos que muestran que los efectos de la ideología de los residentes y la escasez de agua interactúan entre sí para influir en la política de conservación del agua. PALABRAS CLAVE: estudios urbanos, medio ambiente, gobernanza, gobernanza regional Representation in a democracy is fundamentally about elected officials pursuing political actions that represent the will of the residents they represent. For a long time, the consensus view at the local government level was that due to vertical constraints and horizontal competition, local government policy is limited in its ability to represent resident ideological preferences. The belief held that since local governments are subject to the decisions of state governments and because they face competition from each other, local elected officials are not responsive to the ideological preferences of their constituents.

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Responsiveness in American Local Governments

Cited by 56 publications

References 69 publications

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Mayoral Partisanship and Municipal Fiscal Policy

The Context of Responsiveness: Resident Preferences, Water Scarcity, and Municipal Conservation Policy

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