Affiliation:
1. University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA,
2. University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, USA
Abstract
The core question driving the study of local politics is—who or what governs local democracy? After decades of study, researchers continue to debate the relative merits of economic, political, institutional, and bureaucratic accounts of local democracy. By providing a test that incorporates each of these four different theoretical perspectives, that analyzes major spending decisions that cities make, and that includes a large, representative sample of localities, we offer a systematic examination of local government decision making. We find that each of the existing one-sided stories is incomplete. Economic constraints are critical in determining what a government can do but the overall balance between redistributional, allocational, and developmental spending is also strongly influenced by political imperatives, institutional constraints, and actual needs.
Subject
Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
77 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献