Details
Local politics affect our lives every day and many of America’s most pressing issues—in policy areas like policing, education, housing, environmental protection, and transportation—require political action at the local level. How does political change happen at the local level of American government? What interests are represented in local decision making? And how do these decisions translate into the provision and distribution of public goods and services?
To answer these questions, a growing body of work examines how local institutional variation—including electoral rules and timing, districting, executive structures, and partisanship—determines the dominance of certain interests over others and the quality and distribution of public services (e.g., Trounstine and Valdini 2008, Anzia 2014, Sances 2016, Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2014, de Benedictis-Kessner and Warshaw 2020, Hankinson and Magazinnik 2023). A parallel stream of research focuses on the strategies and characteristics of local bureaucrats and their unions to understand who gets what from local authorities and how these interest groups shape local institutions (Hartney 2022, Anzia and Trounstine 2024, Ba et al. 2024, Kogan and Hartney 2024).
This workshop brings together scholars to discuss the interplay of political institutions, bureaucracy, and interest groups at the local level in the US. This conference will foster dialogue among scholars working on these topics, generate discussions on overlapping theories and applications, and encourage collaboration on future research into issues of representation and public service provision in US local jurisdictions.
Speakers:
Michael Hartney, Boston College
Vladimir Kogan, Ohio State University
Mayya Komisarchik, Rochester University
Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Purdue University
Adrian Pietrzak, Princeton University
Mike Sances, Temple University
Tyler Simko, Princeton University
Ariel White, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Elisa Wirsching, Princeton University
Hye Young You, Princeton University