Political Market Framework Research Articles

Incentivizing recycling in local governments: the moderating role of fiscal conditions in the adoption of Pay-As-You-Throw recycling programs

This article aims to extend the political market framework by exploring whether policy demand or supply is the key consideration for local governments’ policymaking and under what financial conditions local governments favor one over the other. We expect that local governments with good fiscal conditions are more likely to respond to public demand, but local governments with poor fiscal conditions pay more attention to supply influences. To test this idea, this study examines the moderating role of fiscal conditions within the political market framework regarding what factors account for adopting local governments’ Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) recycling programs in solid waste management (SWM). The results of the fixed-effect logistic model support that fiscal conditions play a moderating role in shifting organizational attention on the supply side based on cross-section data covering 1,840 local governments in the United States.

Expanding the political market framework to explain executive decision‐making during the COVID‐19 crisis

AbstractThe traditional political market framework (PMF) argues that elected officials respond to policy demands by adopting policy that furthers their goal of reelection. However, an emerging crisis can make this approach to decision‐making challenging as the immediacy of response, the needs of the public, and technical expertise may conflict with reelection goals. This conflict can encourage elected officials to engage in blame avoidance by delegating policy‐making powers to the bureaucracy. Utilizing a mixed methods approach to analyze state‐level governor responses to COVID‐19, this paper expands the PMF by capturing the influence of bureaucratic demands on elected official decisions to delegate or transfer power to the bureaucracy. We find evidence that bureaucratic expertise, under the right set of circumstances, influences policymaker decisions to delegate policymaking power. Lastly, we advocate for a renewed focus on democratic principles and the consequences of delegation for transparency, accountability, and social equity. In understanding the specific dynamics at play when bureaucrats and executives work to develop policy in crisis, practitioners may gain a better understanding of how to navigate difficult decisions. The specific executive orders across states are not particularly well‐known, and providing evidence of the steps other states took to combat the crisis may prove useful to practitioners in the emergency management space. If practitioners have a more complete understanding of why policy is made and by what mechanisms, they may apply a focus on implementation strategies that are effective and relevant.

Examining COVID-19 response among local governments through the political market framework.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought to the forefront the importance of a local government's role during public health emergencies. While cities around the world have led the pandemic response in their communities by extending public health services, providing socioeconomic assistance to constituents and aiding small businesses and jurisdictions in the United States have had varying degrees of success in managing the crisis. As such, this study employs the political market framework to explore the impact of supply-side determinants (form of government, preparedness capabilities, and federal aid) and demand-side determinants (population, socioeconomic factors, and political affiliation) on a local government's COVID-19 response. Given the lack of attention, the emergency management literature has paid on government form, exploring the impact of council-manager vs mayor-council systems on COVID-19 response has been this study's primary focus. Using a logistic regression and survey data across Florida and Pennsylvania local governments, this study finds government form significant for COVID-19 response. Following our findings, local governments with a council-manager form were more likely to adopt public health and socioeconomic strategies in response to the pandemic than were those with other forms. Furthermore, having emergency management plans, receiving public assistance from Federal Emergency Management Agency, community characteristics like the percent of teens and non-White residents, and political affiliation also had a significant impact on the likelihood of response strategies being adopted.

How Policy Entrepreneurs Encourage or Hinder Urban Growth Within a Political Market

This paper updates and extends the Political Market Framework (PMF) by integrating elements of interest groups and political market theory with policy entrepreneurs’ (PEs) roles in explaining the patterns of urban infrastructure construction. The prominent role of PEs is observed through a grounded analysis of two large infrastructure projects in Mexico City. A comparative study of the cases suggests that: (1) The agency of PEs in political markets is central to explaining the construction of urban infrastructure; (2) PEs contribute to the definition of pro-growth or anti-growth coalitions and the definition of public problems; (3) the legitimacy of PEs is grounded in their political or technical reputation, or both; (4) the appropriate use of political institutions requires that PEs know how to use electoral timing strategically; and (5) the role of PEs seems to be better understood within a bounded analysis framework, such as the political markets approach.

The Political Market and Sustainability Policy

This essay introduces the political market framework (PMF) and discusses its implications for understanding local sustainability policy. The PMF conceptualizes public policy related to sustainability as the product of exchange between governmental policy suppliers and voter and interest group policy demanders. After presenting a political market model, the role of political institutions is introduced. Institutions structure exchange relationships by determining transaction costs of searching for mutually beneficial agreements, bargaining over outcomes, and monitoring and enforcing decisions. The central implication for research is the need to account for the moderating role that political institutions play in sustainability policy decisions. A research agenda based on the PMF is advanced. The conclusion addresses the limitations of the framework as well as its implications for policy adoptions, program designs, and individual behavior.

Ballot Measures for Open Space Conservation: Economic and Institutional Processes in Cities

This article examines referendums for open space conservation, focusing on an assessment of their likelihood in cities. It presents data on conservation referendums, over 15 years, based on the Trust for Public Land’s LandVote® database. Economic and institutional factors of influence are explored across cities, testing whether those factors explain differences in the likelihood of referendums and their passage. One finding is that the frequency of conservation referendums varies dramatically across American cities. Additional findings, from a pooled time-series analysis, are that economic and institutional contexts of cities affect the likelihood of conservation referendums. The likelihood of referendums and their passage is further tested across alternative models to evaluate the robustness of the findings. While its central contribution is to research on local referendums, the article connects to the political market framework to identify factors influencing the likelihood of open space referendums.

Beyond Borders: Governmental Fragmentation and the Political Market for Growth in American Cities

Political fragmentation has been conceptualized as a phenomenon which increases competition for mobile citizens and jobs between local governments within the same region. However, the empirical basis for this nexus between governmental fragmentation and increased competition for development is surprisingly lacking. Utilizing a newly constructed database that matches political fragmentation indices (horizontal, vertical, and bordered) to a nationwide survey of economic development officials in 2014, we begin to fill this gap by analyzing the influence fragmentation has on the use of tax incentives, regulatory flexibility, and community development tools in U.S. cities. Applying the political market framework and a Bayesian inferential approach, we find that the proliferation of local governments increases incentive use. However, more specialized governance increases the probability of using community development activities.

Patterns of urban infrastructure capital investment in Chinese cities and explanation through a political market lens

ABSTRACTCities across the developing world have experienced great challenges in making sufficient capital investment in urban infrastructure (CIUI) during periods of rapid urbanization, yet this phenomenon has captured little academic attention. Focusing on Chinese cities, this study analyzed the investment patterns at the temporal, sectoral, and spatial scales and investigated the drivers through the lens of the political market framework. China’s national CIUI, relying mainly on local revenue sources, increased steadily from 2000 to 2014. The patterns of CIUI across cities indicated polarized investment attributable to the influence of public demand and governmental supply mediated by intergovernmental political institutions. These findings advance our understanding of urban infrastructure investment in the course of rapid urbanization.

Factors that Influence County Government Expenditures and Revenues: A Study of Florida County Governments

Following the political market framework, this panel analysis examines the effects of democratic institutions on government size in Florida’s 67 counties from 1998 to 2007. Regarding group demand, the study suggests that unemployment rate reduces county government expenditures and revenues. Regarding elites’ preferences, Democratic elites’ preferences reduce expenditures and revenues. With regard to mass support, citizen income has a positive influence on expenditures and revenues. On the other hand, Democratic ideology reduces both expenditures and revenues. Finally, we found that county government structure influences expenditures and revenues significantly, but home rule does not.

Determinants of state long-term debt: The political market framework

Because it focuses on the moderating role of political institutions – which emphasize equilibrium policy outcomes under different institutional arrangements derived from the interaction of policy supply and demand – the political market framework provides useful insights for analyzing the determinants of state long-term debt. Thus, different types of state political institutions should affect the degree of long-term debt in terms of specific demands and supply. Despite the numerous studies that have either applied the political market approach to local governments in policy areas or have analyzed the determinants of long-term debt from only a financial management perspective, few studies have applied the political market framework to state governments. Thus, adopting a state financial management perspective and conducting a panel data analysis using state data from 1980 to 2014, this study identifies the reasons why state governments act on long-term obligations in terms of the political market framework. This study also aims to expand the application of the political market framework to state governments and to integrate determinants of state long-term indebtedness.

Explaining the transparency of local government websites through a political market framework

This paper contributes to the literature on government transparency by addressing the question of what drives the differences in local government levels of transparency. Our main objective is to ascertain whether transparency is mainly driven by the leadership, capacity and other political traits of the local governments themselves – “supply-side determinants” – or, rather, if it hinges on social, cultural and/or other local community factors (“demand-side” determinants). We test the hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework using the results of the Municipal Transparency Index which is based on the information disclosed in the local governments' official websites and was applied to all Portuguese municipalities for the first time in 2013. Our findings indicate that municipalities with less financial autonomy, run by male mayors, with a larger number of consecutive terms in office, and smaller margins of victory in local elections display lower levels of transparency. On the demand-side, the unemployment rate and the average age of the municipal population emerge as the best predictors and are both negatively associated with transparency.

Policy of Delay: Evidence from a Bayesian Analysis of Metropolitan Land‐Use Choices

Do local policymakers strategically use delay in permitting development to forestall the growth machine? The mantras of smart growth and sustainable development assume local governments can balance the competing values of economic development, ecology, and equity interests in a community. We employ a political market framework to explain differences in local government land use decisions. This framework conceptualizes policy choices as resulting from the interplay between the aggregate policy demand by residents, developers, and environmental interests and the aggregate supply by government authorities. Delays can be imposed strategically through processes of development approval by city governments where industry strength and form of government vary within county‐level service‐delivery fragmentation. We utilize novel Bayesian multilevel modelling of data collected from 2007 and 2015 surveys of Florida city planners and find strong institutional effects and multilevel relationships.

Competing interests and the political market for smart growth policy

The broad intent of smart growth is to reduce development in environmentally sensitive areas by limiting the outward expansion of development and redirecting private investment to urban areas. Local decisions that shape and constrain land uses can pit narrow economic interests against broader-based environmental organisations and impact decisions on smart growth. Based on the political market framework, this study specifically examines the influence of pro-growth and smart-growth interest groups on smart growth policies adopted by local governments in the state of Massachusetts, USA. The results suggest both real estate interests and environmental groups influence local policy decisions, and depending on the policy, the characteristics of local political institutions mediate these influences.

Determinants of Access to Legislative and Executive Branch Officials: Business Firms and Trade Policymaking in the U.S.

We examine the characteristics of business firms that gain access to legislative and executive branch officials in the trade policymaking area. Our empirical analysis of over 1200 manufacturers reveals that legislators were most attracted to firms with foreign market expertise, firms which actively participated in politics with outside lobbyists and campaign contributions, and firms with significant employment in the state and/or district. Executive branch officials were responsive to firms with foreign market expertise, firms from industries that had previously received tariff protection, firms using in-house government affairs specialists and outside lobbyists to convey information, and firms making campaign contributions to members of the trade oversight legislative committees. Our results largely support the political market framework and provide insights about the attractiveness of certain demanders to suppliers of trade policies from the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. federal government.

Local Institutions and the Politics of Urban Growth

This article uses a political market framework to analyze how the structure of local political institutions affects the relative political influence of development and environmental interests in the context of urban growth. Using panel data from 406 Florida cities from 1998 to 2003, the empirical analysis finds important interaction effects between the structure of city executive branch institutions and interest group variables. The economic and political forces driving urban growth do not operate identically in all cities—they vary as a function of institutional context. Institutional structure helps determine which interest groups have their preferences reflected in local land‐use changes and development patterns. The resulting patterns suggest a “sustainability paradox” wherein richer, environmental interests push for the preservation of environmental amenities while at the same time accelerating the number of residential units built in a community.

Institutional Choices for Local Service Contracting and Collaboration

Outsourcing local services necessitates collaborative relationships, yet we know little about local service delivery mechanism choices that formalize these relationships. Alternatives to in-house production include contracts with for-profit organizations, provision by local authorities, and intergovernmental agreements. Previous studies of service choices focus on potential “efficiency gains” from external exchange, especially the economic costs on the supplier’s side resulting from market failure or asset specificities. This study instead applies the political market framework to examine how collaborative local service arrangements are shaped by or respond to supply and demand characteristics. The empirical analysis estimates, logit and multinomial probit models of public service delivery in Georgia. Ferris and Graddy (1986) suggest that decisions reflect a two-step process, i.e., choosing whether or not to contract out and then choosing with whom to contract. This paper also follows their two-step approach. Each local government decides whether or not to collaborate (logit model) and then chooses with whom to collaborate (multinomial probit model). The findings indicate that the transaction cost of supply and demand factors defined by the political market framework affect the choices of collaborative arrangements and alternative service delivery mechanisms.

Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.

Political Institutions and Conservation by Local Governments

In this article, the authors develop a political market framework to explain the circumstances under which Florid a counties will supply environmental public goods in the form of conservation amendments to county general plans. The framework emphasizes the role of local legislative and executive institutions as mediators of local policy change. Using count models and interaction terms, the analysis shows how the strength of real estate interests constrains the ability of professional county managers to pursue conservation policies. The findings reinforce the importance of developing theories of urban politics in which local political institutions are not transparent.