Party and Ideology in American Local Government: An Appraisal

Abstract

For decades, research on US local politics emphasized the distinctiveness of local government, but that has begun to change. In recent years, new data on partisanship and ideology have transformed the study of local politics. Much of the ensuing scholarship has concluded that local politics resembles politics in state and national governments: partisan and ideological. I argue that such a conclusion is premature. So far, this newer literature has been insufficiently attentive to the policies US local governments make—and to the fact that they are mostly different from the issues that dominate national politics. Going forward, scholars should prioritize measurement of preferences on these local government issues, develop theories of when and why local political divisions will mirror national partisanship and ideology, and investigate why there are links between some local policies and national partisanship and ideology—and whether those links also exist for core local government issues.