Polycentric theory, as applied to sustainability policy adoption, contends that municipalities will act independently to provide public services that protect the environment. Our multilevel regression analysis of survey responses from 1,497 municipalities across the United States challenges that notion. We find that internal drivers of municipal action are insufficient. Lower policy adoption is explained by capacity constraints. More policy making occurs in states with a multilevel governance framework supportive of local sustainability action. Contrary to Fischel’s homevoter hypothesis, we find large cities and rural areas show higher levels of adoption than suburbs (possibly due to free riding within a metropolitan region).

/pdf/cities-and-sustainability-polycentric-action-and-multilevel-4uyhmf1dzh.pdf

City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation

Cities and Sustainability Polycentric Action and Multilevel Governance

Medicaid is the single largest public health insurer in the United States, covering upwards of 70 million Americans. Crucially, Medicaid is also an intergovernmental program that yokes poverty to federalism: the federal government determines its broad contours, while states have tremendous discretion over how Medicaid is designed and implemented. Where some locales are generous and open handed, others are tight-fisted and punitive. In Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener demonstrates the consequences of such disparities for democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries' interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, the book examines American democracy from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.

Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics

This review article explores some of the key concepts, trends, and approaches in contemporary urban governance research. Based on a horizon scan of recent literature and a survey of local governmen...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07352166.2018.1499416

New urban governance: a review of current themes and future priorities

Urban politics research has not kept pace—empirically or theoretically—with city governments’ engagement with climate change policy. Thousands of cities globally have made commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and are taking steps toward these goals. In the United States, research has examined the motivations for such actions and has described some of the implementation challenges cities are encountering, but we lack a theoretically informed understanding of how these actions intersect politically with existing interests, institutions, and fiscal realities in cities. This article identifies five political entry points that are specific to urban climate change policy and can provide a foundation for empirically and theoretically valuable research. The pursuit of such an interdisciplinary urban research agenda for climate change would enhance our understanding of when and how cities are successful in addressing climate change and would provide new answers to long-standing questions in urban p...

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The Politics of Urban Climate Change Policy: Toward a Research Agenda

Marketisation of urban service delivery gained renewed intensity in the crisis. Mobilising Polanyi’s concept of double movement, we analyse how marketisation of public services both creates and constrains the potential for urban counter movements in the USA and Europe. We identify three main urban responses: ‘hollowing out’, where cities engage in service cut backs; ‘riding the wave’, where cities attempt to harness the market; and ‘push backs’, where cities and citizen movements oppose marketisation. Although the city is constrained by marketisation at national and international levels, we find evidence of push back and, in it, the potential for public service alternatives.

/pdf/marketisation-public-services-and-the-city-the-potential-for-5bv72064es.pdf

City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation

Citations

Cities and Sustainability Polycentric Action and Multilevel Governance

Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics

New urban governance: a review of current themes and future priorities

The Politics of Urban Climate Change Policy: Toward a Research Agenda

Marketisation, public services and the city: the potential for Polanyian counter movements

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