The Diffusion of Local Bill of Rights Resolutions to the States

Abstract

Local officials engage in activism by passing laws in defiance of state and/or federal authority. Their intent is to stimulate policy change or, at least, to force a higher government response. What effect, if any, do their actions have? This study employs event history analysis, seeking to determine whether there is a relationship between local activism and state response as it pertains to the local Bill of Rights movement. In this movement, some localities and states passed resolutions or ordinances in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act. While legislative professionalism is related to state resolution activity, the stronger predictor is the breadth of diffusion among localities.

Keywords

local activism bottom-up policy diffusion local governments policy

Between 2002 and 2007, 406 cities and counties passed resolutions or, in a few cases, ordinances in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act (hereafter Patriot Act). These “Bill of Rights” (BOR) resolutions “generally reject provisions of the Patriot Act and associated executive orders, instruct local authorities not to comply with federal regulations that conflict with the Bill of Rights, and request that the federal government inform the municipality about antiterrorism investigations and surveillance carried out within its jurisdiction” (Vasi and Strang 2009, 1717). In a four-year period, the diffusion of the BOR movement had radiated from its city of origin, Ann Arbor, Michigan, to over 13 percent of U.S. cities with populations of 25,000 or more, ultimately covering 80 million people with BOR resolutions. The latest to adopt a BOR resolution is Wichita Falls, Texas, in December 2007. Much of this diffusion can be credited to the work of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), an organization formed by the author of the first BOR resolution with the intention to “help … communities across the country participate in [the] ongoing debate about civil liberties and antiterrorism legislation that threaten liberties … ” (Bill of Rights Defense Committee). As communities adopted BOR resolutions, Nancy Talanian, the organization’s founder, disseminated the movement’s progress online while providing participation information to new communities as they became interested. The movement took off.

As legally subordinate units of government, localities have no formal say in national policy; their reprimand of the Patriot Act can then be viewed as symbolic—an attempt to signal to higher leaders their disagreement with the federal government’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But to what end? While this local activism has not curtailed the scope of the Patriot Act, it may be that we can use this unique case of municipal policy diffusion to examine whether local activism may stimulate a state response. If so, it may be that localities have the potential to affect higher policy in ways that exceed their legal status. To date, forty-eight states have experienced local BOR activity. Eight states have since adopted, and another nine have formally considered, BOR resolutions. The remaining thirty-one states, however, have not acted. Is there a relationship between the diffusion of local BOR activism and state BOR activity? Did the states that adopted BOR resolutions experience greater local BOR activism than those that did not? Using data provided by the BORDC, this article will examine whether local BOR activity is positively related to state-level BOR activity and whether greater local activity increases the likelihood of state response. It may be that the greater the local BOR activism, the greater the pressure and potential political reward for state-level adoption, thus, the greater the likelihood for state action.

The Local Role in the Intergovernmental Environment

The divisions of power and responsibilities among governments in the American federal system have long interested scholars from a variety of disciplines including political science, law, public administration, economics, and public policy. Ann Bowman and Richard Kearney remind us that the balance of power debate dates to the earliest days of the nation. Despite more than two centuries of consideration, however, there is no consensus regarding which level of government should do what “aside from, perhaps, … that the lowest capable level of government should be responsible for any given function or service” (Bowman and Kearney 2011, 564). Even so, local power and capacity is often hampered by higher government action and inaction, preventing local leaders from adequately addressing their citizens’ needs and demands. Local power has, in fact, been chipped away for more than two centuries such that some report that today they are legally “no better off than conquered provinces” (Berman 2003, 2). Local power over traditionally local functions has been curtailed; local power to raise and spend tax dollars has been limited; and “transfers of program responsibilities from state and federal government, as well as the imposition of state and federal mandates … ,” particularly since the 1980s, has meant that localities are, as David Berman put it, “ … doing more than they have ever done, although less by themselves” (Berman 2003, 11).

Despite their legal subordination, many local governments have responded to local needs and demands creatively, by becoming policy entrepreneurs. Finding the states lacking as “laboratories of democracy,” local leaders have acted in policy areas including health care, living wages, public smoking, rights protections, and others. Some have claimed that these progressive innovations signal a “renewed aggressiveness” on the local level (Schragger 2010, 39)—a change in local attitude. Richard Schragger points to the “renewed economic and political clout” of cities to help explain this change (p. 44). With this, local leaders are experimenting, creating the policies that are needed but not forthcoming from the states.

Others have noted the broken intergovernmental partnership as a possible cause of local aggression (Riverstone-Newell 2012). Gone are the days in which localities were “third partners in American federalism” (Hodos 2009, 55). Over the past several decades, localities have been made to assume greater responsibilities on behalf of the federal government and their states, while also having to pick up the costs of programs and implementation. At the same time, local leaders have watched their discretion and autonomy, and the lines of state–local communication erode.

Local Activism

Whatever the cause of local aggression, some are extending it to activism. A recent study reports the wide range of issues that have been targeted for activism (Riverstone-Newell 2012). Some of the earliest cases involve the 1980s nuclear-free zone movement and the divestment of local funds from firms conducting business with or in South Africa. The sanctuary city movement of the 1980s—in opposition to the U.S. support of Central American authoritarian regimes and the Contra rebels in Nicaragua—involved more than 1,000 localities nationwide (Shuman 1992; Hobbs 1994). At the close of 2007, over 270 localities had passed resolutions protesting the war in Iraq (Dolan 2008).

Social matters have been targeted for local activism as well. An estimated 100 local policies meant to deter undocumented immigrants were active in 2010 (O’Neil 2010). In contrast, another 120 policies actively prevented city employees—including police—from ascertaining and/or reporting an individual’s immigration status to the federal government (Ohio Jobs and Justice Political Action Committee 2011). In addition, an estimated 100 resolutions, executive orders, and ordinances—both supportive and unsupportive—have addressed same-sex couples’ rights since 1980 (Human Rights Campaign Foundation). Examples of other policy areas targeted by local activists include medical marijuana, living wages, gun control, placement of cellular towers, the Kyoto environmental protocols, and corporate personhood. A recent addition involves local food rights. Fourteen towns in nine states, from Maine to California, recently passed ordinances declaring themselves to be “food sovereign,” fully capable and within their rights to grow and sell food without state or federal inspections, among other regulations (Ananda 2011).

The term, local activism, indicates official, positive acts of defiance that can reasonably be understood as deliberate attempts to spotlight unfavorable laws and policies in hopes of stimulating change. The intent is to “expand the scope of conflict” to the public by engaging the media (Schattschneider 1960) in order to pressure higher governments to defend their policy positions or to change them, voluntarily or through the courts (Riverstone-Newell 2009). To be sure, most intergovernmental interaction is diplomatic, involving negotiation, bargaining, stalling, and even threats. The use of local activism, however, suggests that local leaders have little faith that accommodation can be achieved through diplomatic means.

Recent scholarship suggests that local activism flows along an increasingly aggressive continuum, from milder acts of reprimand to active resistance to rebellion to defiance (Riverstone-Newell). Opposition to the Patriot Act has taken two forms: reprimand and active resistance. Most actions are nonbinding resolutions calling upon the federal government to revise the Patriot Act in keeping with the Constitution. This is considered reprimand because these resolutions lack enforceable directives. A few localities have gone further to pass ordinances, making it a punishable offense for city employees to cooperate with federal officials in the enforcement of certain aspects of the Patriot Act. In other words, in addition to reprimanding higher government policy, the locality orders public employees (usually) to refrain from participation in all or part of the higher policy on pain of penalty, such as a fine. In either case, reprimand or active resistance, local leaders hope to engage the public with their activism. By educating and acquiring a sympathetic public audience, local leaders hope for movement diffusion to other localities. With sufficient diffusion, local activism and the local governments that participate in it become increasingly difficult to ignore. The bottom-up diffusion of activism suggests an interesting new role and source of power for localities in the federal arena. The implication is that, despite their subordinate status, localities may be able to effect change—perhaps lasting and meaningful change—in policy areas that fall beyond local control.

Theory and Hypotheses

Policy diffusion first appeared in the literature in the 1960s (Crain 1966; Walker 1969; Gray 1973) and has recently enjoyed new interest (Shipan and Volden 2006). A number of studies have focused on the horizontal diffusion of policies, from locality-to-locality (Crain 1966; Godwin and Schroedel 2000; Knoke 1982) or from state-to-state (Berry and Berry 1990; Walker 1969; Gray 1973; Case, Hines, and Rosen 1993; among others) as well as the factors that facilitate diffusion and the evolution of policies as they diffuse (Shipan and Volden 2006). Researchers have also studied vertical diffusion, particularly the diffusion of policies from the federal government to the states (Allen, Pettus, and Haider Markel 2004; Walker 1973) and from the states to the federal government (Boeckelman 1992; Mossberger 1999). Some researchers have turned their attention to what Shipan and Volden (2006) refer to as “bottom-up federalism”—the diffusion of local policy to the states. These scholars found that, given an amenable political environment, professional legislatures can and do learn from local experiments (Ibid.).

Studies of bottom-up policy diffusion are few, partly because of the difficult nature of the research. Records of ordinances, resolutions, and executive orders are maintained locally rather than through centralized, collection (Mintrom 1997a, 1997b). Thus, local activities must be identified piecemeal, or (when fortunate) the researcher may locate an issue-oriented group, such as the BORDC, whose mission prompts them to record and make available cases of local activism. The academic studies on bottom-up policy diffusion that exist suggest that states can and do learn from their local laboratories, sometimes adopting policies that have proven beneficial or politically acceptable at the local level. Examples include same-sex marriage bans (Haider-Markel 2001), abortion restrictions (Mooney and Lee 1995), antismoking policies (Shipan and Volden 2006), and gun control policies (Godwin and Schroedel 2000), among others.

A variety of personal and political stimuli may motivate state-level leaders to emulate local policies. Given the right conditions,

… state-level policymakers may view localities to be laboratories of democracy in a similar way to how state and national officials view the policies in various states. State politicians look to localities for policy ideas that they can advance at the state level and for which they might claim credit. (Shipan and Volden 2006, 826)

Logically, the vertical diffusion of local activism is similar and done for similar reasons although, because local activism is contentious, we can expect that bottom-up diffusion of activism to be less common. Occasionally, however, the states do appear to join their localities in activism aimed at federal policy. For example, when a number of localities divested their funds from companies that were financially connected to the South African apartheid regime during the Reagan administration, several states joined them. It is believed that state and local pressure eventually led the national government to amend its policy, imposing sanctions on South Africa (Shuman 1992). In addition, some states joined their localities in protesting the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing Iraq war. By joining in, activist states signal their disagreement to the federal government while also projecting responsiveness to their own citizenry. With this drive for responsiveness in mind, it is hypothesized that that state BOR adoptions become more likely as local adoptions rise.

We can look to traditional bottom-up policy diffusion to identify the conditions that make state-level adoption likely. Shipan and Volden (2006, 840) found that the bottom-up policy diffusion of antismoking policies was more likely when “state legislatures are more professional” and when organized interests “have enough political clout” to prod the movement beyond the confines of local jurisdictions. Without the pressure of these groups, the local movement satisfies itself, allowing the states to see “local laws as a substitute for legislation at the state level” (Ibid.).

Applied to the BOR movement, organized interests are known to have been heavily involved at the local, state, and national levels. The diffusion of BOR resolutions among localities was the subject of a recent study by Vasi and Strang (2009). These scholars set out to explore the types of localities that engaged in the BOR movement and the keys to the movement’s successful horizontal diffusion. The authors found that the social movement infrastructure already in place was critical to moving progressive localities to quick adoption. Beyond these early adoptions was the mobilization of other groups outside of the progressive community, moderates and conservatives whose involvement “grew over time” leading to “later resolutions … whose representative character muted opposition among elected officials” (p. 1747). Key was “the ‘miscibility’ of multiple movements and causes—the capacity of groups with different agendas, traditions, and core beliefs to combine around a common banner” (p. 1748). The authors agree that in the immediate sense, these local efforts were largely symbolic; however, “[a]s the political winds have begun to shift in their favor, activists have sought to build on municipal successes to seek out bigger prey—state houses and, after the 2006 elections, the U.S. Congress” (p. 1757). With this, we will assume wide interest group involvement at the state and local levels and move on to the role of legislative professionalism.

It is hypothesized that the more professional the state legislature, the more capable and attentive it is to local needs and demands. Professional legislatures are typified by longer sessions, “superior staff resources, and sufficient pay to allow members to pursue legislative service as their vocation” (Squire 2007, 211). Shipan and Volden’s study of the bottom-up diffusion of antismoking policies revealed the importance of professional legislatures in the diffusion process; notably, that more professional legislatures are more likely to have the time, staff, and interest in local laboratory activity. Absent a professional legislature and its attendant level of citizen contact, efficiency, legislator ambition, and technical capacity, policies promulgated at the local level relieve pressure on the state to act. Conversely, the more professional the legislature, the more likely the legislature is to “exhibit greater legislator-constituent contact (Squire 1993), promote legislative efficiency (Squire 1998), overcome informational barriers to produce more technical policies (Ka and Teske 2002), and have stronger progressive ambition resulting in greater public opinion–policy congruence (Maestas 2000, 2003)” (Shipan and Volden 2006, 827). These qualities may make it more likely for legislatures to adopt their laboratories’ policies, rather than ignore them or allow them to substitute for state action (Ibid.). Thus, it is hypothesized that more professional legislatures are more likely to adopt BOR resolutions.

In addition, state ideology is likely important to BOR adoptions. Progressive states are expected to participate in the BOR movement while conservative states are not. There is evidence of this at the local level: “Cities that voted in greater numbers for Al Gore and for Ralph Nader were more likely to pass BOR resolutions and to do so earlier. Cities that strongly supported George Bush and Pat Buchanan were less likely to promulgate resolutions and/or to pass them later” (p. 1733). We might expect to see the same type of effect on state responsiveness to local BOR activity. Considering this, and the conservative nature of the Patriot Act, as well as the conservative administration at the time, state ideology is controlled for in the model.

Finally, internal factors such as a high level of educational attainment and urbanization have been associated with support for civil liberties. Vasi and Strang (2009, 1724) note that the “strong effects of formal schooling and residence in urban areas” have been associated with “intellectual flexibility, sophistication, and breadth of experience.” They include a quotation from McClosky and Brill (1983, 416) which I replicate, in part, here:

Respect for the freedom of others and for their rights to think and act as they choose is also furthered by greater exposure to the media, by residence in a cosmopolitan environment, and by membership in the educated and sophisticated subcultures which are among the major repositories and carriers of the ideals for society.

Those who support civil liberties should be naturally predisposed to support opposition of the Patriot Act. These internal factors are controlled for in the model.

Data and Findings

Primary criterion for inclusion as a case was classification as an unresponsive or responsive state (n = 50). This number reflects the actual number of states; those that experienced no BOR activity were censored. According to BORDC, eight states have passed BOR resolutions while another nine unsuccessfully introduced BOR legislation for consideration (see Table 1). Active states, regardless of outcome, are combined and coded with the value 1 (responsive), while the twenty-seven unresponsive states—those that had local BOR activity, yet have not acted at the state level—are coded 0. The reason for combining those states that passed or attempted to pass BOR resolutions is that, in this study, the outcome of the attempt is less important than the attempt itself; we are primarily interested in detecting whether local adoptions may place sufficient pressure on state lawmakers to stimulate a policy response.¹ The data used to identify responsive and nonresponsive states are available on the BORDC website.

Table 1.

Distribution of States According to BOR Activity January 2002 through December 2006.

No State or Local Activity	No State Activity	Attempted BOR Resolution	Passed BOR Resolution
Alabama	Connecticut	Arizona	Alaska
Louisiana	Delaware	Massachusetts	California
North Dakota	Florida	Minnesota	Colorado
Oklahoma	Georgia	New Hampshire	Hawaii
Utah	Illinois	New Jersey	Idaho
Arkansas	Indiana	New Mexico	Maine
	Iowa	Oregon	Montana
	Kansas	Rhode Island	Vermont
	Kentucky	Wyoming
	Maryland
	Michigan
	Mississippi
	Missouri
	Nebraska
	Nevada
	New York
	North Carolina
	Ohio
	Pennsylvania
	South Carolina
	South Dakota
	Tennessee
	Texas
	Virginia
	Washington
	West Virginia
	Wisconsin

Source: The Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

This study hypothesizes that local BOR activity stimulates state-level BOR activity. Presuming that state responsiveness becomes more likely as local BOR activity accumulates, the number of localities with BOR resolutions or ordinances in place at the time of state response, and the percentage of state population covered by a local BOR resolution at the time of state response are included as a predictor variables. Also included are measures of government and citizen ideology. We might expect conservative states—out of party loyalty and trust for law enforcement (Vasi and Strang 2009, 1725)—to be less likely to contest the policies of a conservative national leadership. Legislative and citizen ideology is measured by Berry and Berry’s updated government and citizen ideology indices (Berry et al. 1998). These measures progress from 1 to 100, with values increasing from conservatism to liberalism.

I also include a measure for legislative professionalism. Previous studies indicate that legislative professionalism may be positively associated with bottom-up policy diffusion (Shipan and Volden 2006). Legislative professionalism is measured using Squire et al.’s updated index of legislative professionalism (Squire 2007). Squire’s index ranges from 0 to 1, increasing from less to greater legislative professionalism. We would expect to see greater state-level activity as legislative professionalism increases.²

Other predictor variables are included to control for their effects on state adoption. Educational attainment and population density are included as these variables have been positively associated with progressive local activism (Vasi and Strang 2009) The means and standard deviations for each of the predictor variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Means and Standard Deviations of Predictor Variables.

	Mean	Standard Deviation
Local adoptions	5.05	9.41
Percent local involvement	15.76	12.97
Legislative professionalism	.195	.117
Legislative ideology	50.93	26.12
Citizen ideology	54.52	14.99
Average educational attainment	24.23	4.18
Population density	200.16	260.92

Importantly, interest group activity has also been associated with bottom-up policy diffusion, but it is not included here for several reasons, the primary of which is that it is assumed to be relevant to all cases. The BOR movement was founded by special interests and heavily promoted by group coalition-building at the local and state levels. Nevertheless, the level and consistency of interest group activity related to local and/or state BOR adoptions is difficult to ascertain. As reported by a BORDC employee, “Piecing together who on the ground worked on the hundreds of local resolutions opposing the PATRIOT act [sic] would be a huge help to our organizing efforts going forward, but much of that history was lost as our organization lacked resources at the time to track that information effectively” (Buttar 2012). However, from interviews, news reports, and other scholarly efforts, it is clear that this issue was targeted heavily by the BORDC, American Civil Liberties Union , and numerous other civil rights groups. Rather than search out a proxy for group involvement, this study assumes interest group activity occurred in each of the forty-four affected states and turns, rather, to other factors to predict state responsiveness.

I employ an event history analysis in attempt to capture the diffusion of local activism to the states, as well as the effect of the predictor variables on state BOR resolution activity. The fifty states were observed annually from December 2002, the year of the first local BOR resolution, through December 2006 to capture all state BOR activity (California being the last state to act in February 2006) for a total of 250 observations. The dependent variable is coded as 0 until state BOR attempt and 1 at the year of state adoption. The sign and magnitude of the estimated coefficients are of interest when interpreting the results of the logit analysis. Table 3 provides both the logistic coefficients and the exponentiated logistic coefficients as B and Exp(B), respectively. The logistic coefficient determines the direction of the relationship while Exp(B) “give the expected change … in the odds of having an event occurring versus not occurring, per unit change in an explanatory variable, other things being equal” (Liao 1994, 16). The percentage change in the odds of state adoption can be “calculated by subtracting 1 from the exponentiated coefficient and multiplying by 100” (Richard 2010, 294).

Table 3.

Logit Estimates for Event History Analysis of State BOR Adoption.

	B	SE	Exp(B)	Significance
Local activity	.072*	.030	1.074	.018
Percent involvement	.001	.022	1.001	.975
Legislative professionalism	−7.654*	3.802	.000	.044
Legislative ideology	.012	.015	1.012	.431
Citizen ideology	.021	.032	1.021	.509
Educational attainment	.081	.075	1.085	.280
Population density	−.001	.002	.512	.999
−2 log likelihood	136.612			Significance
χ²(7)	18.981			.008

*p < .05.

The percentage of the state population covered by BOR resolutions or ordinances at the time of state adoption appear insignificant when predicting state BOR activity. However, the accumulation of local BOR adoptions appears to matter. The coefficients for local activity is significant at the .05 level, indicating a 7 percent increase in odds of state BOR activity for each unit increase in local BOR adoption. Thus, it appears that it is local BOR activity, the events themselves, which stimulates state activity, rather than the accumulation of the state’s population under local BOR resolutions. Perhaps the horizontal diffusion of local activism, at least in the case of the BOR movement, gains power through diffusive breadth rather than depth. This finding may be partially explained by number of local adoptions. The average number of localities involved in responsive states was fourteen, while the average number of localities involved in unresponsive states was five, suggesting that the more local adoptions, the more legislators are “reminded” of local support for BOR resolutions and, perhaps, as a result, they are pressured to act.

After controlling for the percentage of the overall population covered by a BOR resolution at the time of state adoption, the values of the legislature, and the number of localities that had adopted a BOR resolution at the time of state adoption, legislative professionalism is negatively associated with state BOR activity. The coefficient for legislative professionalism was negative and significant at the .05 level; however, the Exp(B) coefficient, .000, indicates that the increase in the odds of state activity is so small as to be undetectable. This finding is likely due to the lack of variance in the values that indicate legislative professionalism. Although it is possible for a state to score 0 to 1, the actual range of state professionalism is .03 to .63, with higher values indicating greater professionalism. Nevertheless, 86 percent of legislatures fall at or under .30. This crowding of values may account for the Exp(B) of .000.

What of legislative values? It was hypothesized that progressive legislatures are more likely to attempt BOR resolutions due to the policy conservatism that the BOR movement combats and the ideological position of the national administration at the time of Patriot Act adoption. There was, however, no relationship found between legislative ideology and state-level BOR activity. Considering the seemingly progressive nature of BOR activity, a follow-up seemed appropriate. I discussed the matter with one liberal state legislator (via e-mail) who cosponsored a successful BOR resolution to Idaho’s legislature in 2005. Specifically, I asked to what extent there was bipartisan support for the amendment. His response:

I live in a university community and there were protest from both the right and left. Many of our local democrats were very opposed to the Act and we have a strong influence of the Libertarian element in the Republican party both locally and at the state level who were very much opposed.… The resolution passed by an overwhelming margin. While we see the two parties even back then moving into the current polarization position of today, it seems incredible that we received overwhelming support from both ends of the political spectrum. I suspect part of it relates to the libertarian streak that we have in the State (lots of Ron Paul supporters out here). (Trail 2004)

Similar bipartisanship emerged elsewhere. In a study of the horizontal diffusion of municipal BOR resolutions, Vasi and Strang (2009, 1745) found “moderates and conservatives … [to be] a significant component of BOR coalitions.” This finding may further support the bipartisan nature of the BOR movement and help to explain this predictor’s lack of significance. Citizen ideology was insignificant in the model. In addition, the coefficients for educational attainment and population density are insignificant.

Conclusion

Local activism has grown since 1980. But what, if any, effect does it have on higher policy? Most change that occurs due to bottom-up activism happens via court determinations. For example, same-sex marriage was propelled into the federal court system with Proposition 8, a citizen-led response to the San Francisco’s (CA) City and County Mayor Gavin Newsom’s order to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It is expected that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually decide the matter of same-sex marriage rights. This study submits that state policy makers may respond to local activism by joining in when activism is directed to the federal government. This suggests that local activism does not go without notice; indeed, as more localities join in, it appears that the states become more likely to respond to local activism, at least as it involves federal policy.

Are there occasions where state policy makers have or would reconsider their own policies because of local activism’s pressure? Here, we begin to explore the power of local activism to stimulate states’ policy-making activity. We know that “traditional” local policy making has been emulated at the state-level and there is some evidence that local activism in the 1980s was emulated, as well. However, none have attempted to measure the effect of local activism on state policy adoptions. This study offers another layer to our understanding of state and local relations in that it appears that the number of localities that engage in activism—the breadth of activism’s diffusion—can stimulate a state response in the form of like policy introduction or adoption. Perhaps the repeated news of additional local resolutions prompts state legislators to pay attention to the local movement in a way that a single activist events, regardless of the size of the locality, does not. If so, movement organizers may be served to focus their resources on the accumulation of cities. In addition, and unsurprisingly, legislative professionalism appears to play a role, albeit weakly and with a negative association. The negative association suggests greater efforts in states with unprofessional legislatures; however, because previous studies have shown that states with professional legislatures are more likely to learn from their localities, and because the BOR movement was unique in its widespread appeal, researchers should be careful in drawing conclusions from this finding.

Much is left unanswered. For instance, this study examines how states react to local activism that is directed to federal policy. How might states respond when local activism is directed to state policy? There is some evidence that the states may consider policy change outside of the courts when faced with local activism (Hobbs 1994; Riverstone-Newell 2009). There is also evidence that most local activism movements involve progressive policy making. The BOR movement was, however, a largely bipartisan effort. Would state adoptions have occurred without this bipartisan support?

The larger significance involves the local role within the intergovernmental system. Although localities remain subordinate to their states, it appears that they may have discovered a new source of power that extends their political clout beyond the confines of their legal status. While they have little power to change higher government policy as individual units, it may be that by working together, localities can present a front to their states that cannot easily be ignored. Having lost much of their influence in state legislatures in the latter decades of the twentieth century, this collective approach may be one way to regain intergovernmental influence.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Meghan Leonard and Carl Palmer for their patience and statistical expertise.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes

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