Different Levels of Government, Different Levels of Political Competence?

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-260
Author(s):  
Mark Chou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Federal Level ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Different Levels

ABSTRACTIn federal political systems such as the United States, there has long existed a view that citizens should be more politically competent at the local level than at the federal level of government. Recent studies have challenged this view. This article argues that these findings may reflect only one part of the broader picture. Through a review of two recent studies, I contend that research in this realm must consider more than only the level of government. Odd as this sounds, assumptions about varying levels of political competence at different levels of government have always been premised on the notion that local-level politics is smaller and less complex than federal-level politics. However, when local politics takes place today against the backdrop of small villages and towns as well as in large cities, these are assumptions that must be reevaluated.

scholarly journals Public transportation and transmission of viral respiratory disease: Evidence from influenza deaths in 121 cities in the United States

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0242990
Author(s):  
Renata E. Howland ◽  
Nicholas R. Cowan ◽  
Scarlett S. Wang ◽  
Mitchell L. Moss ◽  
Sherry Glied
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Population Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Respiratory Illnesses ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Transit Ridership ◽  
Transit Use

One important concern around the spread of respiratory infectious diseases has been the contribution of public transportation, a space where people are in close contact with one another and with high-use surfaces. While disease clearly spreads along transportation routes, there is limited evidence about whether public transportation use itself is associated with the overall prevalence of contagious respiratory illnesses at the local level. We examine the extent of the association between public transportation and influenza mortality, a proxy for disease prevalence, using city-level data on influenza and pneumonia mortality and public transit use from 121 large cities in the United States (US) between 2006 and 2015. We find no evidence of a positive relationship between city-level transit ridership and influenza/pneumonia mortality rates, suggesting that population level rates of transit use are not a singularly important factor in the transmission of influenza.

Domestic “Dogs of War” Unleashed

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelton Stromquist
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Municipal Politics ◽  
Strike Activity ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Housing Shortages

Municipal politics offers an opportunity to assess the impact of the Great War on the lives of workers in Australia and the United States and the fortunes of labor and socialist parties. Although both countries lay on the periphery of the European conflict, each contributed significant manpower and economic resources to the war effort. Each also faced the disruptive impact of the war on their economies. Locally soaring prices, spot unemployment, housing shortages, and the loss of breadwinners’ income put great stress on working-class families that labor and socialist parties sought to address. In the pre-war period, these parties in both countries contested for power in cities but more successfully in the United States, despite limits on municipal home rule. A pre-war surge in strike activity was also more intense in the United States. These circumstances shaped the local politics of the war years in which locally mobilized anticonscription and antiwar activity in Australia surged at the local level. In the United States, urban elites successfully used socialist opposition to the war to severely repress and ultimately disable socialists’ capacity to maintain their pre-war strength in cities. As a consequence, while US socialists’ gains eroded during and after the war, in Australia successful local mobilization against conscription enabled the Labor Party to make gains in municipal as well as state and national politics. The war dramatically changed the political landscape for labor and socialists in both countries—for the worse in the United States and for the better in Australia.

All Politics Is Local: The Reemergence of the Study of City Politics

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 611-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Trounstine
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Politics ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Outcomes

The study of local politics has been relegated to the periphery of political science and many explanations have been offered for the marginalization of the subfield. I offer three related arguments for why scholars should revisit the study of sub-state politics. First, the local level is the source of numerous political outcomes that matter because they represent a large proportion of political events in the United States. Secondly, there are methodological advantages to studying local politics. Finally, analyzing politics at the sub-state level can generate thoroughly different kinds of questions than a purely national-level focus and can offer different answers to questions that apply more generally. Research on local politics can and should contribute to broader debates in political science and ensure that we understand both how and why cities are unique.

scholarly journals Underneath Kyoto: Emerging Subnational Government Initiatives and Incipient Issue-Bundling Opportunities in China and the United States

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Koehn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Stress Reduction ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Stabilization Policies

At present, progress in mitigating global GHG emissions is impeded by political stalemate at the national level in the United States and the People's Republic of China. Through the conceptual lenses of multilevel governance and framing politics, the article analyzes emerging policy initiatives among subnational governments in both countries. Effective subnational emission-mitigating action requires framing climatic-stabilization policies in terms of local co-benefits associated with environmental protection, health promotion, and economic advantage. In an impressive group of US states and cities, and increasingly at the local level in China, public concerns about air pollution, consumption and waste management, traffic congestion, health threats, the ability to attract tourists, and/or diminishing resources are legitimizing policy developments that carry the co-benefit of controlling GHG emissions. A co-benefits framing strategy that links individual and community concerns for morbidity, mortality, stress reduction, and healthy human development for all with GHG-emission limitation/reduction is especially likely to resonate powerfully at the subnational level throughout China and the United States.

scholarly journals Socioeconomic Segregation in Large Cities in France and the United States

Demography ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1051-1084 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Quillian ◽  
Hugues Lagrange
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Socioeconomic Segregation

scholarly journals The Effect of Partisan Representation at Different Levels of Government on Satisfaction with Democracy in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie VanDusky-Allen ◽  
Stephen M. Utych
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Satisfaction With Democracy ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
American National Election Study ◽  
Respective State ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Analyze Data

AbstractIn this paper, we analyze how variations in partisan representation across different levels of government influence Americans’ satisfaction with the democracy in the United States. We conduct two survey experiments and analyze data from the 2016 American National Election Study postelection survey. We find that Americans are the most satisfied with democracy when their most preferred party controls both the federal and their respective state governments. However, we also find that even if an individual’s least preferred party only controls one level of government, they are still more satisfied with democracy than if their most preferred party controls no levels of government. These findings suggest that competition in elections across both the national and state government, where winning and losing alternates between the two parties, may have positive outcomes for attitudes toward democracy.

New Mayors: France and the United States

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (x) ◽  
pp. 263-275
Author(s):  
Richard Balme ◽  
Jeanne Becquart-Leclercq ◽  
Terry N. Clark ◽  
Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot ◽  
Jean-Yves Nevers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Socialist Government ◽  
The University ◽  
The City ◽  
Significant Support ◽  
The Welfare State

In 1983 we organized a conference on “Questioning the Welfare State and the Rise of the City” at the University of Paris, Nanterre. About a hundred persons attended, including many French social scientists and political activists. Significant support came from the new French Socialist government. Yet with Socialism in power since 1981, it was clear that the old Socialist ideas were being questioned inside and outside the Party and government—especially in the important decentralization reforms. There was eager interest in better ways to deliver welfare state services at the local level.

Who Wins and Who Loses in the Provincial Courts of Appeal? A Statistical Analysis, 1920–1990

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter McCormick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Data Base ◽  
The United States ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Party Capability ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Appeal Courts ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractGiven the visibility and obvious importance of judicial power in the age of the Charter, it is important to develop the conceptual vocabulary for desribing and assessing this power. One such concept that has been applied to the study of appeal courts in the United States and Great Britain is “party capability”, a theory which suggests that different types of litigant will enjoy different levels of success as both appellant and respondent. Using a data base derived from the reported decisions of the provincial courts of appeal for the second and seventh year of each decade since the 1920s, this article applies party capability theory to the performance of the highest courts of the ten provinces; comparisons are attempted across regions and across time periods, as well as with the findings of similar studies of American and British courts.

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