Can Institutional Reform Have a Lasting Impact on the Policy Agenda? Evidence From the 10-1 in Austin, TX

Abstract

Institutional reforms to districted city councils from at-large systems are typically motivated by the desire to increase geographic and descriptive representation, enriching representation for historically excluded groups. The policy impact of descriptive representation, however, has been found to be conditional and not definitive. In this article, I explore whether institutional reform from at-large to districts has effects on a city council's policy agenda, or whether institutional constraints can quell the reform's impacts. I look to the “10-1” reform in Austin, Texas, implemented in 2015, using an original dataset collected from items in the council's 2009–2019 meeting minutes for a direct measure of the agenda. After coding each item for policy substance and testing the agenda's diversity, I find that the reform had short-term effects on the policy agenda. Instead, local government's agenda is largely driven by external problems and pragmatic needs facing the city. Consequently, the effects of reform are overwhelmed by institutional stickiness.