Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of appropriations laws, we measure the quantity of policy enacted given distributions of House, Senate, and executive preferences. The findings show that a larger gridlock interval and greater distance between the House and Senate medians promote the use of appropriations bills as substantive policymaking vehicles. This effect is especially pronounced when new chamber majorities come to power. We conclude that divergent preferences among lawmaking institutions affect legislative productivity, but winning coalitions can still make substantive policy changes using unorthodox lawmaking processes.

This paper presents the design and results of a voter mobilization field-experiment conducted during the 2019 election in conjunction with Vote.org. To test the effect of non-partisan voter mobilization billboards fitted with Election Day information, maps of study areas in four states were overlaid with a grid (or “fishnet”) containing 3-mile by 3-mile cells. Cells were randomly selected to be in the treatment or control group. All available billboards in the treatment cells that met certain criteria were purchased and fitted with a reminder to vote. Across the four states, 207 billboards were treated and 142 served as control billboards for the weeks leading up to Election Day. Results indicated that registered voters living in treated cells had a probability of voting that was higher than those living in control cells. The effect size was similar in magnitude to comparable mobilization treatments and was strongest among mid-propensity voters.

Political yard signs are one of the most conspicuous features of American political campaigns, yet they have received little attention as a form of political communication or participation. In a climate in which the American public is highly polarized, these symbols are more than simple campaign tools—they are literal markers of partisan identity. As public cues that push into private life, they affect individuals and their neighborhoods, coloring perceptions of social spaces and impacting social networks. In Politics on Display we answer a series of questions about this familiar feature of electoral politics: Why do people put their preferences out there for the world to see? Do neighborhoods become political battlegrounds? And what are the consequences of displaying yard signs in these spaces where we spend most of our time? We answer these questions with an innovative research design, documenting political life in neighborhoods with complementary data sources: street-level observation of the placement of signs and neighborhood-specific survey research that delves into the attitudes, behavior, and social networks of residents. Integrating these data into a geo-database that also includes demographic and election data—and supplementing these data with nationally representative studies—we bring together insights from political communication, political psychology, and political geography. Against a backdrop of today’s political environment of conflict and division, we advance a new understanding of how citizens experience campaigns, why many still insist on airing their views in public, and what happens when social spaces become political spaces.

This article explores whether the places where people live—and specifically the diversity of incomes where people live—influence views about income inequality. Using a unique survey of New York City that contains geographic identifiers and questions about attitudes toward inequality, coupled with a rich array of Census data, we assess the degree to which the income diversity within spatially customized neighborhood boundaries influences beliefs about inequality. We find consistent evidence that attitudes about inequality are influenced by the places where people live—those who are exposed to more income diversity near their homes perceive larger gaps between the rich and everybody else, and are more likely to believe that the gap should be smaller. Moreover, this effect appears to be especially pronounced among those with lower educational attainment and at either end of the income spectrum.

311 is a telephone and web service that allows residents of many cities to report nonemergency concerns and problems with city services to their local government. This article explores the Census-tract-level variation in 311 contacting volume within New York City. Drawing on previous research on citizen–government interaction, service delivery, and civic engagement, the article focuses on how contacting propensity and condition both explain spatial variations in contacting volume. These explanations are tested using indicators that describe the people who live and work in the space, the housing in the space, the economic development of the space, and the space’s representation in city government. 311 contacting is divided into three categories (government-provided goods, graffiti, and noise) that are separately analyzed using regression models that account for spatial and serial dependence. The article also discusses the theoretical and methodological challenges of using 311 data to understand the distribution of problems within a city.

Social context is a vitally important concept to political geographers, but one that suffers from measurement problems and ambiguities of definition, particularly at the most localized levels of measurement. In this paper, we argue that unique insights about context can be gained by combining the tools of survey research with the geographic tools of spatial analysis. By spatially interpolating indicators of neighborhood-level political discussion from egocentric network batteries, we capture meaningful variation in micro-level political environments. Focusing on three activist-driven measures of the political environment, we demonstrate that these measures pass key validity tests and improve model fit compared to unit-invariant measures of social context. We conclude by discussing the practical considerations and challenges associated with this measurement strategy and discuss other, more general dimensions of social context that might be captured utilizing this methodology.

Much previous research has examined the causes of political participation — primarily focusing on socio-economic status, resources, and election characteristics — in both national and local elections. A more recent line of research has focused on political context and its impact on political opinions and participation. This contextual research however has primarily focused on social context and not policy context. In this paper, I examine whether the quality of city-provided public goods in a community impacts political engagement in the form of turnout. I do this by estimating tract-level turnout for the 2009 New York City elections. The quality of the city services is measured down to the Census tract using data from New York City’s 311 service complaint program and elementary school evaluations. Results offer robust support for the author’s theory that inferior public goods provision leads to political disengagement.

Despite generations of research on local public goods and city power structures, there is little recent research that identifies super-local intra-city variations in public goods quality and the causes of this variation. Using geocoded data from New York City’s 311-complaint program, this research examines whether the distribution of public goods conditions are socio-economically equitable and whether they can be tied to representation on the City Council. Census tract-level panel time-series models with serial and spatial controls are estimated for 2004 to 2013. Results do not support the hypothesis of a socio-economic service underclass but do suggest a more political cause: neighborhoods that are represented by city council members who have served longer tend to improve in condition.

This paper explores the conditions under which local governments are likely to engage in formalized intergovernmental developmental cooperation. The author theorizes that policy competition, informational and divisional transaction costs, and resources condition the likelihood of institutional collective action. Data from a variety of sources-including a unique author-conducted survey of local officials in Colorado-are used to test hypotheses in a dyadic model of local cooperation. Results indicate that agreements are more likely in competitive policymaking environments and when jurisdictions have more informational resources.

Environments matter for politics. They supply information, incentives, and influences that mold how individuals and electorates engage in politics. However, environments are typically conceived of in a relatively narrow fashion, considering only the immediate context or jurisdiction that an individual or electorate is located within. We expand this framework, arguing that surrounding environments are also consequential by offering an important constraint: exit options. Building on Hirschman’s (1970) assertion that people can exercise exit or voice in response to organizational dissatisfaction, we argue that the quality and quantity of exit options available to the electorate act to either constrain the citizenry stimulating turnout, or enable exit at the expense of voting. We test these hypotheses with a unique dataset of turnout in mayoral elections across 496 cities between 2002-2004 incorporating not only immediate environments, but also the nature of the surrounding political environments to capture exit options. We demonstrate that these exit options influence democratic activity. Some of our findings run counter to what we would expect (and hope) from democracy in multi-government contexts: fewer and less robust exit options appear to reduce turnout. Our research demonstrates that conceiving of environments as being limited to a single domain of analysis is missing much of the story. Environments exist in layers. Accounting only for the most central layer omits the interdependence between places, and the influences they exert.

The author develops a theory for understanding local developmental goods expenditures in metropolitan areas. The basis of the theory is that local officials seek to minimize the economic and political risks of policy failure by anticipating how their policy choices are likely to influence the movement of people and firms into and out of jurisdictions. The theory is tested on a data set of 1,500 cities that make up 15 randomly selected metropolitan areas using spatial-lag and spatial mixed models. Statistically significant spatial autocorrelation and spatially lagged explanatory variables support the theory and lead to inferences about which populations matter most to local politicians.

The author develops a theory for understanding local developmental goods expenditures in metropolitan areas. The basis of the theory is that local officials seek to minimize the economic and political risks of policy failure by anticipating how their policy choices are likely to influence the movement of people and firms into and out of jurisdictions. The theory is tested on a data set of 1,500 cities that make up 15 randomly selected metropolitan areas using spatial-lag and spatial mixed models. Statistically significant spatial autocorrelation and spatially lagged explanatory variables support the theory and lead to inferences about which populations matter most to local politicians.

Displaying a political yard sign is a conspicuous element of the election experience but an understudied act of political participation. We argue that the study of spatial patterns in the dissemination of yard signs speaks to the debate over ―context‖ as a cause of political participation. We ask whether evidence of such contextual effects exist, and if so, how they operate: through the micro-social environment and interpersonal communication, or the meso-social environment and impersonal information cues? To address these questions, we utilize an original, geo-coded observational dataset of more than 25,000 households in Franklin County, Ohio from the 2008 presidential election cycle. In addition to traditional predictors of participation, we find evidence that spatial dependence exists in the distribution of yard signs at both the property level and at the Census block level, indicating that both contextual mechanisms are simultaneously important in creating the ―sign wars‖ often observed in neighborhoods.

Objectives. Previous research on redistribution by local governments has not accounted for spatial context. I develop a model of local own‐source redistributive spending that accounts for the economic characteristics and policy decisions of geographic neighbors.Methods. I estimate a modified spatial 2SLS equation of own‐source redistributive spending that accounts for endogeneity between neighboring policy decisions and own policy decisions. The data set spans the 48 contiguous states and utilizes data from the 2000 Census and the 1997 Census of Governments, among other sources.Results. I find that the policy choices and economic characteristics of jurisdictional neighbors are significantly related to own‐source housing and community development spending decisions. Jurisdictions reduce their redistributive policies to prevent unwanted movers from entering and produce redistributive packages similar to surrounding jurisdictions.Conclusions. The nuances of geographic context are a critical determinant of local redistributive spending decisions.

We examine bill support rates (BSR), the percentage of times a lawmaker votes for a class of bills rather than the status quo on the final passage vote, as a function of her ideology. The set of BSR maximizers is the set of ideal points yielding maximal BSRs. Using simulations and simple derivations, we show that three theories of lawmaking - a simple Downsian Congress, a Party Cartel Congress, and a Veto Pivots Congress - make quite distinct and very different predictions about the location and marginal shifts of the set of BSR maximizers. We formulate simple tests for each theory’s predictions and for the predictions that distinguish among the theories. We propose practical methods for implementing these tests statistically. Using newly assembled data, we calculate bill support rates and estimate the set of BSR maximizers for a variety of bill types in the House of Representatives in three congresses (the 102nd, 105th, and 106th). We carry out the required statistical tests. We are reluctant to over-interpret preliminary data, but initial findings make it difficult to confirm predictions drawn from all three theories. In further work we will extend the analysis to all post-war congresses, allowing stronger inferences and conclusions.