Title: When Mayors Matter: Estimating the Impact of Mayoral Partisanship on City Policy Authors: Elisabeth Gerber, Daniel Hopkins Entrydate: 2009-09-18 07:59:20 Keywords: Regression discontinuity design; partisanship; urban fiscal policy Abstract: U.S. cities are limited in their ability to set policy. Can these constraints mute the impact of mayors� partisanship on policy outcomes? We hypothesize that mayoral discretion--and thus partisanship�s influence--will be more pronounced in policy areas where there is the less shared authority between local, state, and federal governments. To test this hypothesis, we create a novel data set combining U.S. mayoral election returns from 1990 to 2006 with urban fiscal data. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that cities that elect a Democratic mayor spend less on public safety, a policy area where local discretion is high, than otherwise similar cities that elect a Republican or Independent. We find no differences on tax policy, social policy, and other areas that are characterized by significant overlapping authority. These results have important implications for political accountability: mayors may not be able to influence the full range of policies that are nominally local responsibilities. http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=938 ********************************************************** Political Methodology E-Mail List Editors: Xun Pang <[log in to unmask]> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]> ********************************************************** Send messages to [log in to unmask] To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify your subscription settings visit: http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php **********************************************************