Two opposing views are central to the literature on local politics. An older view holds that local policy outcomes are determined primarily by cities' structural constraints. A newer view claims that partisanship and ideology are increasingly important. In this article, we argue that the two views are complementary rather than competing paradigms. By combining them, researchers can come closer to understanding when and under what conditions partisanship matters. Our analysis is based on a study of local employment policy in 94 Danish municipalities over a 12-year period, in which we focus on job centres' use of educational activation. We find several effects of structural constraints but no direct effect of partisanship. However, when unskilled unemployment rises within municipalities that have shifted from a right-wing to a left-wing mayor, educational activation increases. The findings imply that partisanship matters, but only under certain conditions and primarily in the short run.
In this paper, we contend that elected women leaders' ability to affect public services in favour of women citizens is conditional on the gender composition of the councils they lead. We leverage variation in the gender of village heads and composition of village councils, driven by an Indian reservation mandate. Using IHDS-II dataset, we find that access to piped drinking water and widows' pension is significantly better in those women-led village councils that also have more women. Subgroup analysis shows that when the gender composition of these councils is in favour of women leader's caste, households report lesser girl harassment, but also lower access to piped water among disadvantage caste groups. Our results underscore the importance of critical mass of women members in village councils. Their collective strength and relational role with women heads shape the latter's effectiveness in delivering women-preferred outcomes.
Rising support for radical-right parties has reshaped public discourse, yet little is known about whether electoral signals resonate across government tiers. Using two decades of data from 299 Flemish municipalities, this paper investigates whether shifts in federal electoral outcomes serve as signals of changing local voter preferences and are followed by changes in local government spending. Municipal fixed-effects regressions show that a 1% increase in a municipality's radical-right vote share is associated with a significant 0.4% point contraction in municipal expenditure. This correlation holds regardless of the mayor's party, suggesting an indirect, cross-party transmission rather than top-down partisan coordination. The analysis also reveals a symmetric pattern: rightward shifts correlate with expenditure contractions, while leftward shifts relate to expansions. The findings document a transmission channel through which federal electoral signals align with local fiscal choices, contributing to the literature on partisan politics and radical-right mainstreaming.
Polarised political landscapes have amplified identity-based narratives, emphasising traits like race, gender, and ethnicity. This article contributes to debates on representation by examining whether descriptive representation - in terms of age and gender - shapes electoral outcomes in municipal elections in Flanders, Belgium. Leveraging an original dataset of approximately 105,000 candidates from 300 municipalities across 2006, 2012, and 2018 elections, a fixed-effects regression model demonstrates that age proximity between candidates and voters significantly enhances electoral performance. We further uncover a persistent gender penalty, with female candidates systematically receiving fewer votes than their male counterparts. A two-stage DiD approach shows, however, that female mayors help mitigate this bias. Additionally, spatial panel regression models indicate that Flemish voters are influenced by neighbouring municipalities, suggesting elements of path dependence. These findings highlight that, even within ideologically driven contexts committed to gender equality, descriptive representation can influence voting behaviour and reduce discriminatory voting patterns.
Digital governance has reshaped state-society interactions by creating new channels for citizen engagement in environmental affairs. Using 23,655 environment-related message-reply pairs from the People's Daily Online Local Leaders' Message Board in China (2020-2022), this study examines government responsiveness and public satisfaction in digital participation. Results show significant temporal fluctuation during COVID-19 and substantial spatial variation across cities. Most appeals focus on local livelihood issues, whereas institutional topics receive less attention. Predictive analysis indicates that satisfaction is associated with city-level context, appeal characteristics, and government response characteristics. City-level factors have the greatest predictive importance, while appeal length, appeal type, response time, and reply length also matter. These findings suggest that satisfaction on digital participation platforms reflects both structural context and interactional features, enriching research on digital participation and government responsiveness.
This article examines how local councillors want participatory arrangements to support their work as elected representatives. It argues that councillors' perceptions matter because they are unlikely to engage with such arrangements unless they regard them as useful. Drawing on theories of democratic representation, the article analyses how councillors' representational orientations shape their preferences for participation. The empirical analysis is based on a Q-method study of 49 councillors in three Norwegian municipalities, who ranked 27 statements on how participatory arrangements could support agenda-setting, problem-solving, and support-building. The analysis shows that councillors want participatory arrangements to serve three different purposes, corresponding to three distinct profiles: listening to citizens' concerns without committing to shared decision-making (noncommittal listening), explaining and justifying political priorities and solutions (paternalistic persuasion), and building acceptance and ownership of adopted policies (pragmatic support-seeking). Across profiles, councillors value participation less as shared authority than as a resource for representative work.
Municipal permitting is a procedural tool that city officials can use to facilitate housing development. City officials control housing permitting in their jurisdiction, but state law ultimately delimits their authority. Using data at the municipal level, the present study examines the likelihood of US municipal governments approving permits for single-family or multifamily units. The study examines panel data on municipal permits for housing and inclusionary regimes. It presents annual data on state pre-emptions of inclusionary zoning compiled from the Local Solutions Support Center, state statutes, and court rulings identified on a case-by-case basis. Panel data for state pre-emptions is an original contribution from this research to the literature. The findings suggest that state pre-emptions of inclusionary zoning have varying impacts on the municipal approval of single-family and multifamily production. The study bridges local government literature and the public/private distinction framework to explain differences in housing units permitted by cities.
This study investigates localist voting in local executive elections, focusing on how candidate profiles and contextual factors shape friends-and-neighbours voting (FNV). Building on the FNV concept, it is examined whether candidates gain greater electoral support in municipalities closer to their residence and how this is conditioned by party affiliation and electoral competition in a multi-party system. Using data from Landrat (county executive) elections in three German states within an electoral cycle, the analysis explores intra-county variation in candidates' electoral performance. The findings confirm that FNV is a measurable phenomenon, though its strength is moderated by factors such as incumbency. Substantial differences emerge across nomination backgrounds: non-partisan candidates display strong FNV effects, whereas populist radical right candidates show only limited localist advantage. Overall, the study demonstrates that localist voting remains a significant feature of subnational elections, highlighting the interaction between spatial proximity, competition, and partisanship for electoral behaviour.
The 'decline thesis' posits that centralisation of power often signals a decline in local government innovation. Drawing on the innovation ecosystem theory, however, we move beyond this thesis to discover the institutional resilience in top-down governance. By analysing Chinese provincial practices from 2003 to 2022, we find that innovation did not significantly falter following the 2013 recentralisation. Instead, the underlying drivers of innovation underwent a structural shift, from a 'bureaucratic championship' logic-characterised by 'upward competition and downward arrangement' - to an adaptive logic that is 'agency-multidimensional and efficacy-oriented'. We conclude that this shift originates from the reconstitution of the local government's ecological niche within a transforming innovation ecosystem.
Extensive research has examined municipal resilience to external shocks; however, quantitative assessments of financial resilience based on performance remain limited. This paper addresses this gap by analysing financial sustainability in Victorian local governments across three phases: pre-crisis (2017/18-2018/19), the COVID-19 pandemic (2019/20-2020/21), and recovery (2021/22-2022/23). Using bias-corrected Data Envelopment Analysis, we find that councils' financial resilience declined during the pandemic. Although recovery was relatively rapid, performance did not return to full efficiency. Both urban and rural councils experienced reduced resilience, with rural councils closely mirroring the overall sectoral decline. Strengthening rural councils' financial capacity may generate system-wide benefits, particularly during shocks. Second-stage fractional regression results show that factors such as council size, taxable income, and local unemployment significantly influence financial sustainability, especially during crisis periods. Overall, the findings highlight important policy implications, emphasising improved shock-response mechanisms and stronger governance, particularly for rural municipalities.
How much does local politics shape public spending? Despite extensive research on federalism and local governance, existing studies primarily focus on fiscal constraints and municipal characteristics, and rarely integrate local politics. This article examines how political attributes influence urban expenditures across 5570 Brazilian municipalities from 2005 to 2022. Combining multivariate and fixed-effects regressions with event-study designs, we find strong evidence that politics influences urban spending, even after controlling for municipal capacity, fiscal constraints, and socioeconomic heterogeneity. Mayors in their second term and easily elected spend more, suggesting that power consolidation matters. Negotiated transfers also increase expenditures. Partisan politics, however, presents heterogeneous effects: while right-wing mayors invest more in urban policies in poorer and smaller municipalities, left-leaning ones substantially increase spending in larger and richer contexts. Mayor changes from the right to the left increase investment, whereas the opposite effect occurs with converse changes, challenging purely technocratic or institutional explanations.
This study examines the impact of intergovernmental transfers, particularly the Municipal Participation Fund (FPM), on municipal fiscal performance in Brazil, with a focus on per capita current expenditure and own-source revenue. Using a panel dataset covering all municipalities in S & atilde;o Paulo state from 2013 to 2021, we estimate instrumental variable regressions to address potential endogeneity between transfers and fiscal outcomes. The number of FPM quotas assigned to each municipality, determined by population thresholds established in federal legislation, is used as an exogenous instrument for per capita transfers. The results reveal a positive and statistically significant association between FPM transfers and per capita current expenditure, confirming the 'flypaper effect'. However, FPM transfers are negatively associated with own-source revenue, suggesting that greater reliance on intergovernmental transfers may undermine local tax effort. The findings underscore the need to reassess FPM allocation rules to reduce fiscal dependence and enhance local government autonomy.
This study investigates the impact of non-partisan lists on fiscal discipline in Norwegian municipalities, using new data on actual coalition agreements in three election periods (2008-2019). Unlike prior studies relying on seat shares or inferred coalitions, this dataset captures precise coalition composition. Using panel regressions with fixed effects, I find that a 10-percentage-point increase in non-partisan coalition share reduces the net operating surplus by 256 NOK per capita (p < 0.01), equivalent to 1.16 million NOK in a median municipality. This effect is concentrated in small municipalities (351 NOK reduction, p < 0.01) and becomes statistically insignificant in larger municipalities. The relationship persists across specifications controlling for seat shares, mayor type, and municipal characteristics. Disaggregated analysis reveals no consistent ideological pattern among traditional parties, suggesting that non-partisan lists weaken fiscal discipline through common pool effects rather than partisan positioning. These findings have implications for institutional design of proportional systems, highlighting fiscal-democratic trade-offs in local governance.
Civic engagement is a crucial sociological indicator for the sustainable success of public policies, yet prior work often treats it as one dimensional. This study examines civic engagement through a multidimensional lens in the context of community building. Using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with 403 valid responses from local crime-prevention programmes in South Australia, the analysis considers five facets of civic engagement: physical, cognitive, affective, social and moral. The distinctiveness of these facets is established, and their associations with residents' place attachment and life satisfaction are examined. The findings reframe civic engagement as multidimensional and suggest that multiple forms of engagement should be fostered in parallel rather than favouring a single mode. The study contributes valid measures for the five facets and a model that links them to theoretically relevant outcomes, providing a clearer and more comprehensive basis for future research and practical application for local governments.
Under the 'decentralized' or 'fragmented' authoritarian governing structure, China's local officials have long enjoyed leeway in implementing central policies in their areas of jurisdiction. Specifically in the religious policy realm, local officials have been selective in how and upon whom to implement repressive policies. How do we explain the local officials' selective implementation of religious policies? I argue that officials' selective repression varies with Party priorities and local relationships. Specifically, the centre's priorities communicated to local officials determine the officials' style of repression and combined with the officials' view of the church then determine the target of repression. The applicability of the explanation is borne out through 120 interviews with Chinese religious leaders and officials. The research reveals that the ways in which religious policies have been and are currently being, implemented at the local level have important implications for Chinese domestic policymaking as well as the society at large.
