2017/01/01 by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, David Glick · 82 citations
Social Sciences · #Democracy #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Federalism #Government (linguistics) #Law #Local Government Finance and Decentralization #Local government #Policy Transfer and Learning #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Public administration #Scholarship #Sociology #State (computer science) #State government
paper · doi:10.1093/publius/pjx026
published in Publius The Journal of Federalism 47(4), 599-621 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2017/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Previous scholarship on American federalism has largely focused on the national government's increasingly conflictual relationship with the states. While some studies have explored the rise of mandates at the state level, there has been comparatively less attention on state–local relationships. Using a new survey of mayors, we explore variations in local government attitudes towards their state governments. We find some evidence that, regardless of partisanship, mayors in more conservative states are unhappy about state funding and—especially—regulations. More strikingly, we also uncover a partisan mismatch in which Democratic mayors provide especially negative ratings of their state’s funding and—even more strongly—regulations. These findings have important implications for state–local relations as cities continue to become more Democratic and Republicans increasingly dominate state-level contests.