What explains local policy cleavages? Examining the policy preferences of public officials at the municipal level

Abstract

Objective: A growing literature argues that national issues and partisanship structure local-level conflict in the United States. This argument contrasts starkly with the traditional view of local politics as fundamentally nonpartisan and nonideological. We reconsider these diverging arguments. Methods: We use a large-scale survey of municipal officials to examine elite preferences on a series of policy tradeoffs. We identify latent dimensions that underlie elite preferences across cities and on a common scale. We examine correlates of these dimensions including individual- and city-level demographics and electoral support from constituent groups. Results: Our results demonstrate that elite preferences in local politics—unlike in national politics—are multidimensional, with two underlying cleavages: one based on partisanship, the other a market orientation to the provision of local services. These latent dimensions align with indicators of constituent group support, suggesting that each dimension reflects substantively meaningful features of conflict in local electoral politics. Conclusions: These findings suggest that local politics are not completely structured by national-level partisan politics. Future research should aim to measure and understand local conflict along both partisan and market-orientation dimensions.