Team Spirit: The Search for Party in Local Politics

Abstract

Canonical models of urban politics largely ignore the role of political parties. Recent empirical analyses also conclude that the partisanship of elected officials cannot explain differences in policy outcomes in American cities. In this paper, we propose a new method for identifying the influence of political parties in local government: the systematic analysis of elected officials’ behavior. In applying this method to several hundred roll call votes cast by members of the city council in San Diego, one of America’s largest cities, we conclude that parties do indeed play an important role in structuring local politics. Contrary to critiques of urban democracy, our results suggest that party labels provide significant information about candidates’ future behavior in office and can help voters make more thoroughly reasoned decisions in local elections.

Keywords: political parties, legislative parties, city council, roll call analysis