The Emergence of Local Government Policy Leadership

Local Policy Leadership

At the junction of administration and politics, and in the center of democratic governance at the local level, sits public policy. The development and delivery of public programs requires the collaborative efforts of a collection of diverse sets of actors and institutions in a range of policy actions. In the classical description, the policy development structure is dichotomous: Elected officials craft and enact policy while administrators implement policy and deliver programs. Leadership, logically, initiates the policy development process. Policy leadership, as one would expect, is an action-oriented and purposive response by elected officials and key administrators to perceived social and economic situations. Eyestone (1971, 153) identifies three conditions that initiate policy leadership: “an opportunity or a problematic situation exists; political leaders perceive this opportunity or problem; and political leaders are legally and politically free to choose among alternative courses of action in light of this opportunity or problem.” Policy leadership, however, notably at the local level, is not solely within the hands of elected officials, as research demonstrates.

Classic studies of local government policy leadership primarily emphasize the role of individuals within local political environments. These studies find that mayors act as policy leaders in their deployment of formal and informal resources (Pressman 1972; Wilkstrom 1979), while city managers often work between political and administrative realms, rather than solely within the administrative domain (Morgan and Watson 1992). Kingdon (2003) describes policy leadership in terms of the function of a policy entrepreneur bringing various sets of actors together to develop policy. This research tradition implies shared authority and responsibility between elected and appointed officials. It challenges conventional wisdom that assumes local government policy-making occurs within at least two distinct and dichotomous realms—that is administrative and political (Boynton and Wright 1971; Svara 1985). Although these findings provide insight into policy leadership at the local level, little-to-no scholarly research on policy leadership utilizes local government as the unit of analysis. This may be due, in part, to scholars’ varied conceptualization of policy leadership praxis.

Some research, however, points toward a collaborative leadership arrangement between the chief elected official, such as the mayor, and the chief administrative officer, such as a city manager or city administrator (Zhang and Feiock 2009). Shared policy leadership at the local level was among the range of topics explored by a team of researchers in the mid- to late 1990s as Europe underwent a series of structural changes in local government (Mouritzen and Svara 2002). The researchers surveyed 4,300 chief appointed administrators from fourteen countries including the United States. They examined a number of questions, but the one most relevant to policy leadership asked: “How do politicians and administrators engage in local government leadership?” Their research identified leadership at the local government apex as the “…point in the government process at which the perspectives and contributions of top politicians and administrators are blended” (Mouritzen and Svara 2002, 107). In terms of policy leadership, the researchers concluded that the elected officials and administrators form an interdependent and shared leadership structure that results in extensive and creative exchange of policy proposals. They noted that the political and administrative dimensions in local government can complement each other, resulting in a more democratic governance system, and that this partnership of leaders can result in expanded capacity for cities (Mouritzen and Svara 2002), notably in a range of policy domains. Based on their research, they conclude that policy leadership in municipalities consists of a merger of democratic mechanisms with administrative excellence and professional commitment. In other words, the emphasis of chief elected officials on political responsiveness complements the administrator’s focus on programmatic efficiency creating an effective policy leadership structure.

Scholars characterize the local government policy leadership structure in the federalist system and within intergovernmental relations in a number of ways such as bottom-up federalism (Riverstone-Newell 2012), intergovernmental politics (Sbragia 1996), local defiance (Fisk 2016), municipal defiance (Bowman 2017), and local activism (Riverstone-Newell 2012). These types of local policy activism then point to “a category of political behavior reserved to local officials who use their positions of authority to purposefully—pointedly—challenge higher government laws and policies to bring about policy change” (Riverstone-Newell 2012, 402). Therefore, on all accounts, local policy leadership refers to situations wherein local government leaders, both political and administrative, respond to social and economic situations by enacting policies or taking actions that are discordant with actions and/or policies of higher governments (i.e., state and/or federal). These locally developed policies may not be intentional and direct challenges of authority; rather, they can be viewed as attempts to fill policy gaps left by higher levels of governments (Riverstone-Newell 2017). In summary, the limited amount of research that focuses specifically on local policy leadership concludes that it can be a contentious issue in a chaotic intergovernmental system of policy design and implementation. In the next section, this article examines the pertinent issues and challenges related to policy leadership in an intergovernmental environment.

Local Policy Leadership in an Intergovernmental Context

Conflict between states and localities is as old as the founding of the United States (Krane, Ebdon, and Bartle 2004). The long-standing tension in state and local government relations revolves around the central issue of the locus of power (Bowman 2017). That is, which government has the power to make local decisions? Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara (2017, 2) explicate the issue in terms of the following: “which people exercise this authority in their geographic area, in their particular branch of government, and over the public responsibilities assigned to their unit of government.” Unlike federal–state relations within the federalist system wherein the states created a national government through the U.S. Constitution, local governments are creations of their respective state and normally lack independent formal constitutional authority. Therefore, “through its constitution, statutes, court rulings, and practices, state government decides how much power and authority its local governments will possess” (Bowman 2017, 1120). Because local governments are products of the state government, their legal and political powers are provided by the states that incorporate them.

Many local governments are not the small rural settlements that existed in the early years of the Nation’s founding. Cities grew and transformed into large urban enclaves and vast metropolitan regions that deliver a complex range of public goods and services through a complex set of intergovernmental collaborative relationships (Parlow 2008; Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017). They play a pivotal role in the governance of the state and, while often lacking significant levels of autonomy and formal authority, continue to amass and exercise considerable economic and political influence in the state, region, national, and increasingly, international arenas. Many American cities have emerged as major players on the global stage, possessing economies exceeding those of many nation-states. Berman (2003, 1) argues that, contrary to federalism’s conventional wisdom, and despite lacking formal constitutional power, local government harnesses the ability “to defend or promote its interests in the intergovernmental system.” Riverstone-Newell (2012, 401) adds, the very nature of the intergovernmental system, where governments depend on one another to govern, is less coercive and more collaborative in which “federal, state, and local leaders lobby, bargain, partner, and negotiate to accomplish mutually agreeable ends.” In sum, although local governments often lack formal and structural power in the federal–state–local governmental relationship, they still possess informal powers that allow them to promote and protect their interests.

It can be argued that because of their unique position in the intergovernmental structure of the United States, local governments are fertile grounds for policy innovation and social change since their legal structures are not as intractable as higher levels of governments (Bowman 2017; Parlow 2008; Riverstone-Newell 2017). This structural flexibility encourages the expansion of democratic and economic values and responsiveness. Although many scholars acknowledge the many advantages of making policy decisions at the local level, this type of decision-making also includes many hazards. For example, Sharp (2012) found that local social programs negatively affect citizen engagement and stifle citizen participation. Policy-making at any level of government in the United States includes many challenges, but the state–local intergovernmental system contains a special set of complexities.

As cities emerged as major players in the political, economic, and social fabric of the nation, and a key member of the intergovernmental system, relations between local and state government grew increasingly complex. Two competing legal principles traditionally served as interpretive frames for determining the level of local government autonomy in terms of state authority. The first, Dillon’s Rule, a legal interpretation by a nineteenth-century Iowa state judge, views local governments as primarily administrative apparatuses in service to state’s missions and policy goals (Parlow 2008; Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017). Dillon’s Rule posits local governments only have powers that are “expressly granted to them by the states” (Parlow 2008, 102).

On the other end of the autonomy spectrum, home rule is a legal principle that contends local governments should have legislative authority for matters concerning their respective localities that are not reserved as matters of state authority (Parlow 2008; Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017). Although the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed Dillon’s Rule as the law of the land, the vast majority of states have adopted some variation of the home rule (Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017). Still, home rule does not grant localities full autonomy. Dillon’s Rule, as the preeminent legal doctrine, still enables states to preempt local government (Parlow 2008; Riverstone-Newell 2017). In a federal system of government, then, where states have significant levels of autonomy, it is difficult to sort their legal relationships with local units of government into two distinct categories: Dillon’s Rule or home rule. The states widely differ in the manner in which they provide legal and policy authority to their local governments.

How states relate to their component units of local government is understandably complex and varied when it comes to the granting of local authority. According to a Discussion Paper Prepared for The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (Richardson, Gough, and Puentes 2003, 13),

In general, the literature treats Dillon’s Rule and home rule as polar opposites with respect to local government autonomy and assumes that either one or the other exists in a state. But both of these assumptions are incorrect. The two doctrines often coexist with one another and neither implies any particular degree of local government autonomy.

Preemptive actions by state government are part of the relationship between state and local government. Preemption refers to “a higher level government us[ing] its legal authority to cancel out a lower level government’s actions” (Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017, 6). Legislative actions, executive orders, and administrative mandates all comprise varieties of preemption. While preemption has a long history in terms of intergovernmental relations, much of it involved the national government nullifying policy actions of states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Recent research reveals a significant upsurge of state government preempting policy actions of many local governments, as they grasped the mantle of policy leadership in a number of critical areas where the national government has relinquished its policy primacy.

Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara (2017) presented their research on preemption, a Big Ideas Work Paper (2017), to the Alliance for Innovation, Local Research Collaborative, and the Research Seminar at the Annual Conference of the International City/County Management Association in October 2017. Their work reveals a growing trend where state governments across the country engage in efforts to curtail and restrict the ability of municipalities to “serve and improve their communities.” Research released by the National League of Cities (DuPuis et al. 2017) mirrors the trends noted in the Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara’s work. While many local government policy leaders will share the concern of state preemption raised by the Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara, and the National League of Cities research, others may claim that this movement is merely reaffirming historic state–local relationships established by the constitution. Dillon’s Rule, they say, is consistent with the principles of federalism. Russell and Bostrom (2016, 3) write that “While local governments play an important role in states, it is unfounded for local jurisdictions to contend that they are equal to the states…[L]ocal governments must belong to the states and the people inside them.”

The next section explores three brief examples of the emerging role of local government policy leadership in selected policy areas. This occurs, of course, within the context of state–local intergovernmental relations as described above.

Trends in Local Policy Leadership

Local governments, like other governmental units, develop policies to adapt to changes in their environment, addressing such policy issues as population increases and/or the development of new social issues (Swindell, Stenberg, and Svara 2017). The examples discussed below show that in addition to responding to the needs and desires of their citizens, some states appear to be raiding local government coffers and shirking their policy responsibilities (Bowman 2017). Local governments not only provide many of the essential public services to citizens, in recent years but have also taken on the leadership role in various policy areas. Some of those policies include minimum wage, immigration, and sustainability/climate change, among others. The following section briefly explores these three policy issues in light of local policy leadership.

Conclusion

This article briefly summarizes the emerging policy leadership role that local governments are assuming in a dynamic environment of intergovernmental relations played out within a federal system of government. Clearly, cities function as key units of government in the United States. They serve as focal points for addressing many social, economic, and political challenges of the day, as seen from a description of a very small sample of local government policy initiatives presented above. At the same time, there is evidence that other levels of government, especially the national government, seem reluctant to tackle the difficult policy issues, instead resorting to devolving them to the next level. Taking the torch of policy leadership by local government seems a logical next step. But, as noted above, there are many challenges and obstacles to navigate. Some are historical in nature; others are more recent. Most relate to the complicated relationship between states and local governments.

While some states delegate significant levels of policy autonomy to cities and local government, this does not seem to be a growing trend. In fact, current research, as outlined above, shows that most state governments are in a preemptive mode of operation. The ability of many city governments to chart their own course in the policy waters appears to be at risk. Of course, each state varies in the scope of policy autonomy it grants to local governments, but that too seems to be waning, according to current research. Cities, then, play an important, but uncertain, role in the U.S. federal system of government.

At this point, it is appropriate to ask the critical question: Is the emergence of local government policy leadership a roaring torch or a flickering flame? The flame of local government policy leadership is burning brightly now, but the state government fire hoses are lining up. Do they have sufficient water pressure? Of course, time will tell.