Local Political Institutions Research Articles

Using punctuated equilibrium theory to explain changes in policy outputs: The case of the United States Coast Guard

AbstractThis article explores the utility of punctuated equilibrium (PE) theory in explaining revolutionary organizational change in the public sector and its effects on policy implementation, with a focus on the United States Coast Guard. We illustrate our model using data from in‐depth interviews with current and former senior Coast Guard officers and enlisted personnel, as well as secondary sources such as historical accounts and budget data. Through content analysis, we argue that PE theory begins with a change in the public sector organization's external environment, which then affects organizational strategy, structure, power distribution, and outputs. Punctuated equilibrium theory proves to be a valuable lens for understanding policy outputs in relation to organizational change.Related ArticlesKwon, Sung‐Wook, and Sylvia Gonzalez‐Gorman. 2019. “Influence of Local Political Institutions on Policy Punctuation in Three Policy Areas.” Politics & Policy 47(2): 300–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12295.Neill, Katharine A., and John C. Morris. 2012. “A Tangled Web of Principals and Agents: Examining the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill through a Principal–Agent Lens.”Politics & Policy 40(4): 629–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00371.x.Peng, Peiwen, and Tangzhe Cao. 2023. “Attention, Institutional Friction, and Punctuated Equilibrium in China's Budget: Changes in Social Security and Employment Expenditure.” Politics & Policy 51(2): 256–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12523.

Manufacturing January 6: How Republican County Parties Mobilized Anger to Promote #StopTheSteal

The #StopTheStealMovement, which culminated in the January 6 attack, was part of a coordinated, months-long campaign to convince the public that the 2020 election was stolen through fraud and that Donald Trump had won. The dominant narrative of how this movement emerged is a national one, with Donald Trump at the center. However, we show how state and local political institutions, events, and actors—in this case, county Republican parties on Facebook—were instrumental in paving the way for January 6.

White NIMBYism and diversity close to home

AbstractObjectiveWe use a survey experiment to study what explains white “not in my backyard” opposition (NIMBYism) to dense and affordable housing—racial threat, material self‐interest, or both.MethodsIn a survey experiment on white U.S. respondents, we vary the presence of a racial prime about black and Latinx community organizations and the proximity of the housing development to the subject's home. We then measure levels of support for a proposed hypothetical housing development, willingness to take political action in support of or opposition to the development, and support for a number of housing‐related and redistributive policies.ResultsWe find that a racial threat, a material self‐interest threat, and a combined racial and material self‐interest threat decrease support for a proposed housing development. These effects are moderated by racial resentment, ideology, and partisanship such that the effects of the treatments are primarily driven by Republicans, conservatives, and the highly racially resentful. These groups are more threatened than others by either Latinx and black people moving in, the development being in their own neighborhood, or both.ConclusionThese findings indicate that racial and material perceived threats play important and interlocking roles in white Americans’ resistance to multifamily housing being built. In a context where local political institutions empower an unrepresentative group of disproportionately white, economically privileged neighbors to mount opposition to dense housing, it is important to understand how white opposition to new dense housing is shaped by racial and financial concerns.

Categories of Political Contestation in Public Libraries

Public libraries in the United States have historically been sites of political contestation. This ranges from contestation surrounding library funding to the content of library collections. Recently, activism within and against public libraries has become more frequent. This begs the question: how does political contestation in public libraries look today? Using a media analysis of U.S. public library contestation and controversy from 2014 to 2023, this paper presents a framework to categorize library contestation. This framework situates public libraries within an ongoing context of efforts to polarize local political institutions.

Practical theology case study of transforming lives of the poor in the Amalinda Forest Community, East London

How can the problem of poverty be addressed by those concerned about the transformational development of the poor in South Africa? The church, as a community of faith and the bearer of the Christian witness cannot be left behind when responding to this question. This article reflects on a practical theological intervention where a church moved beyond its walls to help those in need. The active role played by the church in addressing this problem and the response of the community will be brought to light. However, this is a challenge that does not affect a local church only: research findings undergird the transformative engagement of the entire church community and calls for local social and political institutions to form a multipurpose partnership to deal with poverty in affected communities.

Dimensions of Local Authority: Mapping Local Political Institutions in Canada's Cities

Abstract Our knowledge of the institutional features of local government in Canadian cities is surprisingly fragmentary. The academic literature has long identified dominant tendencies in Canadian local institutions, but systematic empirical data has been missing. In this article, we address this gap in knowledge in two ways. We introduce the Canadian Municipal Attributes Portal (CMAP), a new open-access database that contains information on dozens of institutional features of local government for nearly 100 of the most populous municipalities in Canada. We then propose a new multidimensional index of authority concentration, which is designed to capture variation in the local structure of decision-making authority in a systematic and nuanced manner. We apply this index to a systematic pan-Canadian subsample of 65 CMAP municipalities. The result is a rich portrait of institutional variety, one that both corroborates and substantially extends our current understanding of the shape of municipal institutions in Canadian cities.

Operationalizing the problem of political alienation for housing studies

This paper adds to a revitalization of alienation as a political problem in the field of housing studies, pointing us to property relations that fragment tenants from acting together with other residents in similar positions. Analyzing ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in Basel with tenants facing mass cancellations of rental contracts, it operationalizes the problem of alienation to more closely examine the interplay of property relations and the subjective or collective experience of tenants: The consolidation of landlords’ interests through complicit legal frameworks fragments tenants not only by producing insecurities within affected blocks. This consolidation also drives processes of individualization and conflict between fellow tenants and between tenants and their union, as well as harms tenants’ belief in (local) political institutions. On the other hand, experiencing these fragmentations and the widespread inhibition of people to act together with others is, in some cases, the most sorrowful aspect for tenants facing rental contract cancellations in Basel. With the proposed understanding of alienation, the paper adds to two debates in housing studies: Outlining alienating property relations, it first foregrounds institutional constraints regarding the question of why many residents do not confront landlords’ plans. Secondly, political alienation highlights the sorrow that can stem from the inhibition of collective action. Here the paper contributes to the debate around displacement and un-homing, showing them to be much more than the loss of original habitat. Lastly, the paper responds to the query of how to empirically apply the theoretically driven concept of alienation by moving questions of collective agency to the fore in housing and alienation theory.

Philosophical Principle of the Anthropic Locality Within the Political Governance’s Interdisciplinary Justification

The purpose of the article is to clarify the philosophical principle of the local in the context of modern political governance. The theoretical basis of the research embraces scenario analysis, dialectical and existential approaches, as well as philosophical anthropology and philosophy of communication. Local communities are a specific reflection of the connection between a person and a place. The specifics of the formation of a special mode of being, which forms and reproduces relations of loyalty, mutual understanding, and a common feeling in the locus, are established. Originality. The article for the first time focuses on the anthropological content of local existence, which is the matrix of civil culture and the prospects of its integration into the global cultural space. Conclusions. Local identity as an object of purposeful formation in the conditions of nation-building requires considering the philosophical provisions that were introduced in the anthropological discourse. At the current stage, Ukrainian civil culture strives to invent specific local meanings of political identity in the conditions of external aggression. Its main components will be consensus, mutual respect, integrity, and the will to unite in order to protect statehood. Interdisciplinary meanings of locality form subject-object relations within which modern political management should be carried out. Taking into account the ethnic, cultural, and socio-functional, and role aspects of locality promises to ensure effective decision-making and increase the well-being of modern local communities. The political context of locality is formed based on the interaction of local political actors and institutions. Their examination within the framework of the case studies approach allows for empirically substantiating the local priorities of political actions. It also indicates the specific functionality of local political and administrative structures. at the local level, the discussed source of locality is the question of the origin or authenticity of the local population. For political governance, this is one of the meaningful contexts for justifying local autonomy or even sovereignty.

Global Evidence on the Relative Importance of Nonfinancial Drivers of International Migration Intentions

Using a global, individual-level survey, this article looks at the relative importance of local amenities and political institutions while controlling for other financial and nonfinancial incentives for individual plans to move between countries. Although the influence of wages and income differences has been extensively explored, less is known about specific non-income-related drivers of international migration and their relative importance. The analysis highlights that satisfaction with politics and amenities both at the origin and destination, are important drivers of migration intentions. These jointly with social networks explain about twice as much in international migration intention outcomes than employment-related incentives (such as relative individual income difference, employment, and job satisfaction), with relative income difference explaining only about 5 percent to 8 percent.

Representation of Tribal women in Panchayat Raj Institutions

Tribal women play the significance role in every society of that particular composition of population. It amount to nearly half of the population and therefore this significant half of its population it is inherently important to ensure their equal presence and participation in the larger process of decision local governance. Panchayati Raj institution as integral, both to democratic self-governance and democratic decentralisation in grass root level in India. Women have always and almost everywhere been on the fringe of political and social power. Women’s leadership has to emerge from the grassroots to gain confidence and to make a claim at higher levels. But it is being said that “Women have come into politics as proxy candidates and continue to be manipulated by powerful patriarchal elites. The barriers of gender division of labour, women’s low levels of mobility, seclusion, lack of information and negotiation skills, internalised low self image, stereotypes and lack of confidence continue in some degree. Generally Panchayats and the higher level political institutions have the same ideology for women’s place there - no women or token women though giving absolute formal equality with one person, one vote and no formal barriers to their entry. For the first time the constitutional amendment mandated one-third minimum reservation for women in the Panchayats. The constitutional amendment has made the composition of Panchayats wider within a broad framework of this amendment, but the social relations of gender are intertwined with local social, economic and political institutions. Decentralisation promotes participation and improves the controlling function held by the lower levels of the political system and hence could be a good policy option for enhancing women’s political participation.

Attention, institutional friction, and punctuated equilibrium in China's budget: Changes in social security and employment expenditure

AbstractBased on the literature on punctuated equilibrium theory (PET), we conducted an empirical analysis on the changes in China's social security and employment budget expenditure at the subnational level from 2009 to 2020. We calculated the kurtosis value for 31 provinces to check whether they conform to PET. We used the number of policy documents and resource congestion as indicators of attention allocation and decision cost, respectively, to determine the impacts they have on budget changes. We then performed regression with a fixed effect model. The results show that the budgetary changes of only 20 provinces obey a leptokurtic distribution. Moreover, the allocation of attention by decision makers and institutional friction can explain this pattern of change. This article enriches the empirical study and extends its applicability to PET at the subnational level, especially in authoritarian regimes such as China, and provides some evidence for subsequent research on selecting indicators.Related ArticlesKwon, Sung‐Wook, and Sylvia Gonzalez‐Gorman. 2019. “Influence of Local Political Institutions on Policy Punctuation in Three Policy Areas.” Politics & Policy 47(2): 300–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12295.Modlin, Steve. 2008. “Defining Involvement of County Commissioners in the Budget Formulation Process.” Politics & Policy 36(6): 1044–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00149.x.Moreno‐Enguix, María Del Rocío, and Laura Vanesa Lorente Bayona. 2017. “Factors Affecting Public Expenditure Efficiency in Developed Countries.” Politics & Policy 45(1): 105–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12194.

Accountability, governance, and institutional change in intergovernmental relations: A theoretical framework

AbstractThis article develops an explanatory framework of institutional change in intergovernmental relations. Using new institutionalism, we focus on a main explanatory factor—the players' perceptions of their own accountability and that of others. Integrating the concepts of multiple accountability and felt accountability, we develop the concept of an accountability gap, meaning differences between the perceptions of players in the central government about their responsibility to provide local services and the perceptions of players at the local level about their responsibilities. Our claim is that perceptual gaps concerning accountability in a two‐tiered or multi‐tiered system may influence their interests, strategies, and behavior and hence determine the timing and pace of specific institutional changes. We illustrate the theoretical framework by examining how Spain managed the COVID‐19 pandemic.Related ArticlesAguado, N. Alexander. 2018. “Mayor‐Council Form of Government and Policy Responses in Times of Economic Travail.”Politics & Policy46(5): 714–30.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12273.French, Edward P., and Doug Goodman. 2011. “Local Government Human Resource Management Past, Present, and Future: Revisiting Hays and Kearney's Anticipated Changes a Decade Later.”Politics & Policy39(5): 761–85.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00312.x.Kwon, Sung‐Wook, and Sylvia Gonzalez‐Gorman. 2019. “Influence of Local Political Institutions on Policy Punctuation in Three Policy Areas.”Politics & Policy47(2): 300–25.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12295.

Direct Election, Bureaucratic Appointment and Local Government Responsiveness in Taiwan

AbstractDoes local democracy induce better service to citizens? While elected officials can be punished at the ballot box if they fail to address citizens’ needs, appointed bureaucrats may have policy knowledge that enables them to better serve citizens. Employing a multimethod design, this paper uses variation in local political institutions in Taiwan to assess the relative merits of direct election and bureaucratic appointment for local government responsiveness. While democratic institutions are often thought to induce responsiveness, I find that in Taiwan, with its historically strong bureaucracy and relatively new democratic institutions, the picture is somewhat more complicated. Elected and appointed officials face different incentives that motivate the latter to respond more quickly and effectively to online requests for help.

Arab States of North Africa: from the Ottoman Empire to the Colonial Empires of Modern Times

The modern history of the Northern Africa (Egypt and the Maghreb) was marked with the progress in transformation of the local social and political institutions with at the same a vast expansion of the Ottoman Porte and later of the West European powers. The Arab Maghreb which firstly became an object of the European aggression from Spain and Portugal in the 15th — 16th CC. later joined the Ottoman Empire together with Egypt. Morocco, however, managed to save its formal independence until the very beginning of the 20th C.A.D. With the European expansion in the 19th C. the Northern Africa turned into a field of colonial experiments: from the direct military occupation to the assimilation politics of the French departments in Algeria, with a later introducing the protectorate regimes in Tunisia and Morocco and transforming Egypt into a zone of strategic communications between the Great Britain and its colonies in Arabia and India. The civilization interaction within the Northern Africa during the colonial epoch brought to light, both in Europe and Russia, a numerous academic historiography, defining main trends in studying modern history of Egypt and the Maghreb area — the most important crossroads of the historical contacts between the peoples and cultures of the Orient and the Occident.

The Political Inclusion of Pakistanis in British and French municipalities: A comparison of Oldham, Villiers le-Bel and Creil

This article shall aim to probe the political inclusion of the Pakistani diasporas in France and in Great Britain. Over the recent years, diminishing voter turnouts in both countries have drawn renewed attention to the issues of the political participation and representation of minorities in mainstream political institutions, thus fuelling debates around the position occupied by women and other minorities in these same institutions. The Franco-British comparison serves to put these debates into perspective, and the study of Pakistanis on both sides of the English Channel reveals that British Pakistanis are well represented in the British political arena, notably at the local level, however their Pakistani counterparts in France are much less visible in French politics, even at the local level. While this differential presence in the respective political arenas appears to be correlated to contrasting migration histories and context-specific demographics (for instance, the British Pakistani population is much larger in size compared to Pakistanis in France), it is also embedded in the prevailing local political contexts. The study of one British city, Oldham, and two French suburban cities, Villiers-le-bel and Creil, serves to illustrate this perspective. Furthermore, it is already well established in the field of migration studies that in Western European countries and cities, candidates from minority backgrounds tend to face more obstacles – compared to traditional, ‘white’ candidates – whenever they stand elections. Looking closely at the political trajectories of various candidates in the cities under study, we set out to identify the impediments that they face first as candidates, then as elected representatives, or councillors. Hence, the aim of this research article is to demonstrate that some inherently discriminatory processes and exclusionary practices enable local political institutions to decelerate and hinder the political inclusion of minority candidates at the local level, blocking their path in a way that they can be kept off these same local bodies. Nonetheless, our research seems to suggest that the British political arena is far more receptive and inclusive for minorities, compared to the French political arena

Path dependence and resistance to it in public policies: The case of charter school policies in the United States

AbstractPolicies are assumed to rarely change after enactment. Punctuated equilibrium theory argues this is because law makers shift attention away from policies after enactment, letting them run on autopilot. I argue that the periods between punctuations deserves study, and that what law makers do is design institutions to make policies path dependent so they can only change within limited parameters—if at all. It may also be that interest groups opposing new policies are still able to shape the way they evolve, pushing against intended paths. In this article I test the influence of path dependence versus group opposition in state charter school policies. I find some evidence of path dependence, but I also find that, to some extent, opposing interests can still change these laws after enactment. Furthermore, I find these policies became increasingly similar over time, partially because of path dependence, but also because of the influence of opposing interests.Related ArticlesErtas, Nevbahar. 2015. “Policy Narratives and Public Opinion concerning Charter Schools.” Politics & Policy 43(3): 426–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12120.Kwon, Sung‐Wook, and Sylvia Gonzalez‐Gorman. 2019. “Influence of Local Political Institutions on Policy Punctuation in Three Policy Areas.” Politics & Policy 47(2): 300–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12295.Patrick, Barbara. 2016. “Performance Policies and Workforce Development: Can the Market Model Be Successfully Implemented in the Public Arena?” Politics & Policy 44(6): 1116–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12185.

Environmental justice against environmental policies: the example of Montreal boroughs

ABSTRACT This article examines middle- and working-class citizens’ opposition to green policies in two Montreal boroughs. Through observation of council meetings, it seeks to understand how citizens discuss green policies in local political institutions. In this study, citizens do not oppose environmental policies by principle nor deny the existence of environmental problems. Rather, they feel swept along by a ‘green revolution’ for which they will bear most of the costs without any short-term benefit. In order to voice this concern, they tend to use the notion of environmental justice in opposition to environmental policies. Their understanding of environmental justice merges a procedural critique of democracy regarding participation and transparency and a substantial critique of inequities in the distribution of the environmental burden. These citizens also manifest an attachment to their neighborhood that connects the environment to the concept of the common good and an exercise of democracy. In this regard, this study reveals how citizens who mobilized within institutions come to a political understanding of environmental issues through the notion of environmental justice.

DEVELOPMENT OF SUB-MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Local self-government is established as an institutional answer to create balance to the central government and improve democratic and development processes in the local community and the entire national society. On the other hand, sub-municipal government is established as a part of local political decentralization, with the aim of strengthening local political and administrative institutions of local government units. Both can be institutional solutions and an answer for initializing and supporting democratic processes in contemporary society. This article provides analysis of relations between political decentralization in local community and sub-municipal government as a tool for strengthening local political institutions in South-Eastern European countries. This analysis aims to show that sub-municipal government can be also a significant institutional instrument for changes in the local community.

Politics, power, and precarity: how tenant organizations transform local political life

As the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated housing precarity, tenant organizations grew in numbers and salience. But membership-based tenant organizations predated the pandemic and will persist beyond it. There are (at least) hundreds of them in localities across the country. Many aim to advance sweeping change. In doing so, they face formidable tasks: politically organizing in race-class subjugated communities, working in opposition to powerful actors (corporate landlords, property managers, etc.), and navigating complex and sometimes hostile local political institutions (city councils, mayors, rent boards, etc.). How do these organizations build power and effect change in the face of such obstacles? Drawing on a rich body of original qualitative evidence (participant observation and in-depth interviews), this paper explores the politics of local tenant organizations. We assess the origins of such organizations, how they are structured, and how they pursue political change. In doing so, we offer a rich descriptive account of phenomena that have largely escaped the attention of political scientists. We find that tenant organizations can cultivate radically different ways of conceptualizing political economy, carve out a distinctive political focus on race-class subjugated communities, and create critical opportunities for otherwise marginalized actors to develop and exercise political power.

Land use institutions and social-ecological systems: A spatial analysis of local landscape changes in Poland

Understanding the complex impacts of human settlement patterns on social and natural systems is critical for immediate and long-term policy decisions and ecosystem preservation. Land-use patterns can be conceptualized as a form of integrated natural-human system within urban regions. However, extant scholarship on urban development and sprawl often overlooks the institutional diversity which exists across countries and regions. Development and land-use are politically charged governance issues, and these studies have rarely examined the influences of local political institutions on land-use changes across countries and over time. To help build cumulative knowledge on such urban systems, this study examines landscape change in Poland, which has undergone significant institutional evolution since the fall of the Soviet Union. Drawing from the urban and social-ecological systems (SES) literatures, we estimate spatio-temporal models of the interactive effects of socio-economic and political variables on land-use intensity. Consistent with an SES approach, the analysis finds that characteristics of the institutional design of land-use regulation – local autonomy, the productivity of the resource, and the predictability of land-use dynamics – influence more-intensive landscape changes over the study period (2006–2018). Specifically, both the electoral stability of the mayor and wealth of the community have a positive interactive effect on the conversion of landscapes to more urban uses. Development is also influenced by spatial and temporal dependency, and the availability of European Union “cohesion” investments intended to address economic inequality and promote sustainable development. The findings advance our understanding of the complexity of urban land-use patterns and sustainability goals.