Who governs America’s cities — organized interests or mass publics? Competing findings in the literature are reconciled by showing that election timing helps reveal when voters or organized groups are pivotal in municipal politics.
🔎 How the study compares 1,600 U.S. cities
- City-level comparison of 1,600 large U.S. cities that differ in whether municipal elections are held on-cycle or off-cycle.
- Focus on policy responsiveness: whether local government actions align with the preferences of the median resident or with organized interests.
- Special attention to organized public-employee interests as a clear test case where group goals can diverge from citizens’ preferences.
📈 Key findings
- Off-cycle elections weaken policy responsiveness, but the effect is asymmetric: responsiveness declines primarily on issues where an active, organized interest pursues objectives that deviate from the median resident’s preferences.
- In the public-employee case, cities with off-cycle elections spend more on city workers than would be preferred by citizens in more conservative cities.
- Where organized interests do not diverge from median preferences, off-cycle timing does not produce the same weakening of responsiveness.
🧭 Why it matters
- Election timing is an institutional lever that alters whether mass publics or organized interests shape municipal policy.
- These findings reconcile competing views about who governs cities and underscore the importance of institutional design for representation and interest-group influence in local politics.
