Mayoral Perceptions of Developmental and Redistributive Policies

Abstract

The validity of Peterson’s policy typology, outlined in City Limits (1981), is dependent on the assumption that local government decision makers understand and order public policies in specific ways. Using confirmatory factor analysis of international survey data on mayoral public policy spending preferences from the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, the authors find that the categories of redistributive and developmental policies are more than creations of deductive reasoning. The spending preferences of mayors in selected industrial democracies conform to the structure and order as specified in Peterson’s theory.