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For the better part of the twentieth century, the question of municipal reformism has drawn urban scholarship: Why do some cities change their governing arrangements while others do not? Focusing exclusively on merit systems, in this study I expose the political underpinnings of merit reform in American municipal history. A duration analysis of merit adoptions in a sample of 252 cities in the 1900–1940 period suggests that both state‐ (home rule status, state merit systems) and city‐specific (at‐large elections, term length, city size, percent foreign‐born, regional location) factors largely determined when and where reform occurred.

The political and policy impacts of alternative governing arrangements are an enduring and important puzzle of urban politics. Locating the source of the empirical confusion over structural effects in the use of static data analysis, the author emphasizes the benefits of investigating the substantive consequences of identifiable events (e.g., changes in form of government, budgeting techniques, the election of a minority mayor) via dynamic multiwave panel data and appropriate estimation techniques. This point is illustrated by analyzing the fiscal effects of reformism in a panel of 222 cities (1946-1966). Findings suggest no more than transient decreases in per-capita city expenditures postadoption of council-manager government.

Ruhil reviews 'Public Service and Democracy: Ethical Imperatives for the 21st Century' by Louis C. Gawthrop.

Although over the past 2 decades several scholars have documented a link between institutional arrangements and policy choices, few studies have demonstrated how different institutional arrangements give rise to different policy outcomes. Further, although some studies have related bureaucratic resources to policy decisions, almost none have illustrated that the way state agencies actually deploy regulatory resources—policy outputs—significantly influences policy outcomes. Focusing specifically on the insurance industry in the United States, in this article we illustrate the impact of state regulatory activities on the solvency of firms in the insurance industry from 1987 to 1997, and in doing so we emphasize the differences between policy outputs and policy outcomes. In the case of policy outputs, for example, we find that elected insurance commissioners, divided state government, budgetary resources, and larger insurance sectors lead to more aggressive solvency examinations of insurers. In addition to examinations, however, we discern an important role for both regulatory and political institutions in subsequent insurer insolvencies.

Traditional studies of minority incorporation focus on the redistribution of public resources that purportedly follows black gains in representation. The present study departs from this approach by focusing on the attitudinal effects of black leadership. Two research questions guide this study: To what extent do blacks' assessments of neighborhood services and conditions stem from black representation in local executive and legislative offices? Are these attitudinal effects rooted in policy and service delivery outcomes? Employing survey data from 3,000 blacks embedded in 52 cities and 53 school districts, this study reveals that blacks report higher levels of satisfaction with their neighborhood conditions, police services, and public schools when represented by blacks in city hall and on school boards and that these evaluations are most positive when improvements in local services are conspicuous. Overall, these findings extend conventional conceptualizations of substantive benefits and challenge more pessimistic accounts regarding the effects of black representation in local politics.

Objectives. Although urban scholarship has come to better understand the dynamics of black political incorporation in the United States, to date scant empirical attention has been paid to an important element of minority representation in local politics—the rise of black mayors. The present study addresses this gap in the extant literature.Methods. We analyze incidences of black mayoralties by fitting standard pooled and random effects probit models to a panel of 309 cities observed between 1971 and 2000.Results. Although cities' racial profiles are strongly associated with the incidence of black mayoralties, black representation on city council, black educational attainment, and reformed governments increase the odds of black mayoral emergence. On the other hand, southern location continues to depress the rise of black mayoralties, as do partisan elections, particularly in cities where no racial group constitutes a majority.Conclusions. Although our results partially confirm extant research on the diffusion of black mayoralties in American urban politics, they also call into question conventional wisdom. Our study emphasizes the need for more large‐N studies of minority representation in urban politics and provides suggestions for how the independent effects of black mayors on municipal policy outcomes might subsequently be analyzed empirically.

Objectives: Although urban scholarship has come to better understand the dynamics of black political incorporation in the United States, to date scant empirical attention has been paid to an important element of minority representation in local politics-the rise of black mayors. The present study addresses this gap in the extant literature. Methods: We analyze incidences of black mayoralties by fitting standard pooled and random effects probit models to a panel of 309 cities observed between 1971 and 2000. Results: Although cities' racial profiles are strongly associated with the incidence of black mayoralties, black representation on city council, black educational attainment, and reformed governments increase the odds of black mayoral emergence. On the other hand, southern location continues to depress the rise of black mayoralties, as do partisan elections, particularly in cities where no racial group constitutes a majority. Conclusions: Although our results partially confirm extant research on the diffusion of black mayoralties in American urban politics, they also call into question conventional wisdom. Our study emphasizes the need for more large-N studies of minority representation in urban politics and provides suggestions for how the independent effects of black mayors on municipal policy outcomes might subsequently be analyzed empirically. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Several recent studies have investigated the relationship between direct democracy & public policy outcomes, with mixed findings. These inconsistencies may stem, in part, from researchers' failure to recognize that direct democracy institutions are distributed nonrandomly across the American states. That is, certain factors may lead a state to adopt the initiative process & influence other policy choices. We revisit the question of how the initiative influences state fiscal policy using panel data from 1960-2000 & a full-information maximum likelihood estimator that explicitly accounts for the endogeneity of the initiative. Our findings suggest that failure to endogenize the initiative in empirical analyses leads to substantially biased estimates of its effects. In particular, we find that once factors that predict whether a state has adopted the initiative are controlled, the initiative has a positive effect on state revenue generation & spending. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

A response to John G. Matsusaka's comment on the authors Fiscal Effects of Voter Initiative Reconsidered: Addressing Endogeneity (both, 2005) rejects his correction to their model & his claim that his estimation corresponds to the findings in the rest of the literature. Discussion begins by demonstrating that the empirical evidence on fiscal conservatism in the literature is not consistent. Attention turns to showing how their key finding regarding the endogeneity of the initiative stands up under alternative model specifications, including Matsusaka's proposal. Evidence of endogeneity is found regardless of which equations include the legislative size variable. Tables, References. J. Zendejas

The history of the rise and diffusion of the merit principle in American government is common lore to students of public administration and political science. Several descriptive accounts notwithstanding, scholars have ignored an intriguing puzzle vis-à-vis state merit adoptions: Why did some states adopt merit systems early in the twentieth century while other states followed suit decades later, and then only when they were forced to do so by the federal government? When we analyze state merit adoptions that occurred between 1900 and 1939 we find nationwide and state-specific demographic, economic, structural, and political factors—for example, growth in patronage constituencies; the use of the Australian ballot; political party competition; dwindling patronage resources post-Pendleton; and the onset of the Great Depression—that shifted politicians' preferences for the merit principle rather than patronage. Our research thus breaks sharply with the extant literature by emphasizing the political undercurrents of merit ...