Does Control Follow the Dollar? School Policy, State-Local Linkages, and Political Culture

State Mandating of Local Government Activities: An Exploration

“…It is notable that the "pditical" variables of party competition and administrative publications rather than the economic variables are the most important. This supports the arguments (Wirt, 1980;Fry and Winters, 1970) that political variables are the most directly significant when pdicy is examined from the standpoint of the distribution of authority or values rather than levels of expenditures. Also noteworthy is that the state administrative quality measure is somewhat more strongly related to mandates than is the party competition measure.…”

“…Future research efforts might fruitfully further disaggregate and specify the relationships examined here; the suggestion that there may be the dimensions of "pditical" and "administrative" centralization related to the "division of labor" arxl "exchange" relationships, respectively, may be especially useful to pursue. Additional recognition and development of the theoretical perspectives noted here (Stever, 1980;Wirt, 1980Wirt, , 1985Thomas, 1986;Stonecash, 1981b;Stein, 1982), along with improved measures and methods (Neiman and Lovell, 1981) to study the appropriate phenomena are also necessary to a better understanding of American federalism and intergovernmental relations. These seem especially necessary to understanding mandating, an increasingly significant issue in state-local relations.…”

“…Thus, examination of the indirect effects of socioeconomic variables will not always increase the total effects (Lewis-Beck, 1977). Despite the consideration of indirect effects, the total direct effects of the pditical variables (party competition arxl administrative publications) remain larger than the total effects of the economic variables (Wirt, 1980).…”

“…The impact of pditical culture is also considered because, as has been noted several times above, it appears to be a broad and influential factor on state policy and intrastate relations and because previous research on state-iocal relations regarding public pdicy indicates its significance (Wirt, 1980). The greatest number of mandates might be expected in the moralistic and the least in the traditionalistic cultures because of their levels of party competition, legislative professionalism, bureaucratic professionalism, and pdicy innovativeness.…”

School Choice Acceptance: An Exploratory Explication

“…For example, Wirt (1980) found close associations between political culture and school centralization. Wide variation existing among the states was found in school centralization ranging from a highly centralized state such as Hawaii to localized Wyoming.…”