Party Competition and Coalitional Stability: Evidence from American Local Government

Abstract

<jats:p>For decades, political scientists have argued that competition is a fundamental component of a responsible party system, such that when one party dominates politics, legislative coalitions destabilize and democratic accountability suffers. In this paper, I evaluate these predictions in an important but largely unexplored legislative environment: American local government. Using an original collection of roll-call records from 151 municipal councils, I show that legislative behavior is more one-dimensional when elections are partisan and the electorate is evenly balanced between the parties. When either of these features is absent, however, elite behavior remains unstructured, with coalitions shifting over time and across issues. These differences across institutional and competitive contexts suggest that partisan elections—and the party organizations that nearly always come with them—are critical for translating electoral insecurity into organized government, raising questions about the capacity for electoral accountability in a growing set of one-party dominant governments across the country.</jats:p>

Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization - Evidence from a Multi-Party Setting

“…However, local news outlets primarily report on local politics, which is generally much less ideologically charged than national politics. Compared to national politics, local politics is often perceived as more consensual and less politicized, with a smaller emphasis on partisan differences (Holtkamp 2017;Bucchianeri 2020). We argue that local news decline can increase polarization by increasing exposure to national, less consensual politics.…”

“…In majoritarian systems, such as the US, the decline of consensual local news coverage should still polarize affected voters. In the American case, local politics has likewise been found to be less divided along partisan lines compared to national politics (Bucchianeri 2020). But in two-party systems, the polarization of preferences should drive voters away from the political opponent, which makes vote switching during elections less likely.…”

“…This stands in stark contrast to the national parliament, where each of the 709 MPs is strictly affiliated with a single party (Deutscher Bundestag 2021). Notably, the fact that local politics is less partisan can also be observed outside of the German context, such as in the US (Bucchianeri 2020).…”

Interest groups in US local politics: Introduction to the special issue

“…Note that this is not the same thing as arguing that local governments might generate their own distinctive ideologies, meaning local ideologies based on local government issues. There is some debate on that question, with some finding evidence of distinctive local ideology in a few large cities (Abrajano et al 2005 ; Boudreau et al 2015 ; Sances 2018 ), and others finding that local politics is often less structured than that and not reducible to a single dimension (Anzia 2022 ; Bucchianeri 2020 ; Bucchianeri et al 2021 ). More research on that question is needed, but the proposal at hand here is something different.…”

“… 4 For more on this line of thinking and evidence in support, see Anzia ( 2021 , 2022 ), Bucchianeri ( 2020 ), Bucchianeri et al ( 2021 ), Jensen et al ( 2021 ), and Marble and Nall ( 2021 ). …”