I’m taking a page from Adam Brown’s blog Abstract Politics, reviewing a recent piece of political science literature, in an attempt to make this blog look like something more than the random, unconnected musings of an academic dilettante. Also, it’s good comp prep.  Anyway, the article is available here (gated except for the abstract, sorry).

Basically, Gerber and Hopkins are arguing that partisanship in local policymaking only matters in areas where mayors (and assumedly other elected officials) have lack constraint.  Constraint, in this case, is defined by “where the money comes from.”  When the state and/or the feds are paying for something, partisan change in policy is minimal.  When executives are more free to act, the election of a partisan changes spending marginally, but significantly and substantively.

This finding/research is similar to Ferreira & Gyourko 2009, except that the lack of influence of mayoral partisanship was related mainly to Tiebour (1956) sorting.  Basically, people had homogeneous preferences, so partisanship of the leader had little effect.  Ultimately, I guess you could call this a constraint on the local executive as well, except one based on the nature of the electorate than the nature of municipal financing.

All told, I think Gerber & Hopkins’ (2011), as well as Ferreira & Gyourko’s, conclusions are reasonable, but may be looking for the policy effects of mayoral transition in the wrong place.  First, I’m still not sure about the applicability of the regression discontinuity design.  Yes, methodologists far more informed than I (including Hopkins) seem to like them, but in elections, they seem inapt.  This is primarily because, although RDD inferences are only biased if an ommitted variable is “unevenly distributed at the point of discontinuity”, small “true” population effects very well could affecting winning and losing at this level of measurement.  Just proof that this is an area I need to read up on more.

Secondly, and more importantly, while I agree with Gerber & Hopkins that constraint on finances is important, what they are primarily measuring in their model is changes in the magnitude of spending, rather than the distribution of spending.  First, we know from some of the race and politics literature at the local level that coethnic mayoral election can have effects of things like efficacy, turnout, etc. among the population.  So, executive differences can have some effect, at least among the mass public.  Secondly, if you can’t affect the magnitude of spending because of constraints, you might be able to affect the distribution of spending within agencies/departments.  More on traffic, less on homeless shelters.  More on public transportation, less on roads.

In short, I think a good place to look for partisan differences in local policy might be the distribution and targeting of local spending.  Who benefits?  Who wins?  Granted, that would be a difficult data collection effort to say the least (damned annoying, actually), but likely worth it.  Might put this one on the to-do list…