Month: October 2024

The Particular and Diffuse Effects of Negative Interactions on Participation: Evidence From Responses to Police Killings

by Cody A. Drolc & Kelsey Shoub

Negative interactions between the public and government agencies, particularly with law enforcement, have long been thought to reduce political participation and trust in government. However, less attention has been given to how negative events in government-citizen interactions shape civic participation and broader policy feedback. Specifically, little research has examined how government contact, whether personal (e.g., being arrested) or proximal (e.g., a family member is arrested), informs public engagement with local services. To fill this gap, we focus on police killings and their impact on the public’s willingness to engage with local public services. 

Theoretically, we draw on the policy feedback literature, which explores how personal experiences with government and government agents influence political participation and public evaluation of government. This framework suggests that government decisions send community-wide signals about the public’s value in the eye of the state, which in turn leads to disempowerment and reduced willingness to engage. Additionally, negative government actions–even when indirectly experienced–undermine perceptions of government legitimacy and thereby reduce participation. Based on these insights, we hypothesize two potential outcomes: the “Police Particular Hypothesis,” where a local police killing reduces engagement with the police specifically, and the “Diffuse Government Hypothesis,” which posits that such negative events decrease participation with local government services more broadly.

To test these hypotheses, we conducted a two-part study. First, we used observational data from Los Angeles, including 911 emergency calls and 311 non-emergency service requests from 2016 to 2020. We use a generalized difference-in-difference approach with matching to explore the effect of police killings on these two types of public engagement. Second, we conducted a survey experiment where participants were exposed to one of three randomly assigned news clippings, including one about a local police killing, and compared their willingness to engage with local government.

The findings demonstrate strong support for the Diffuse Government Hypothesis. In the weeks following a police killing, the number of 311 service requests dropped significantly, indicating that negative interactions with the police led to broader disengagement from local government services. However, there was no significant change in 911 emergency calls, suggesting that despite the negative events, the public still sees the police as essential for emergency situations. The figure below illustrates such relationships over time. The survey experiment further confirmed these findings, showing that participants exposed to the police killing vignette were less likely to trust and engage with local government. However, it also showed a reduction in the likelihood that someone would reach out to the police, providing some support for the Police Particular Hypothesis and suggesting that we might have observed floor effects in the observational study.

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This study contributes to our understanding of how negative events in government-citizen interactions affect community participation, expanding on policy feedback theories that traditionally focus on political participation. The findings have important implications for policymakers and public managers, highlighting the potential for spillover effects from negative events, such as police killings, to erode broader government legitimacy and engagement. 

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Drolc, Cody A. and Kelsey Shoub. 2024. “ The Particular and Diffuse Effects of Negative Interactions on Participation: Evidence From Responses to Police Killings.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 623–646. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12541.

About the Authors

Cody A. Drolc is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. His research primarily addresses program implementation and oversight in an intergovernmental context, specifically focusing on policies such as Social Security Disability and veteran healthcare. 

Kelsey Shoub is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research examines two broad questions: How do descriptive identities (e.g., race and gender) of officials and civilians intersect with context to shape outcomes; and How does language relate to policy and perceptions of politics? She has been published in Science Advances, the Journal of Public Administration and Theory, and the American Journal of Political Science, among others.

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Potholes, 311 reports, and a theory of heterogeneous resident demand for city services

by Scott J. Cook, Samantha Zuhlke, & Robin Saywitz

An important criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of local governments is how – and whether – they respond to the needs of their residents. Sometimes, local governments proactively provide basic services to meet their residents’ needs. Other times, residents make their needs known to government officials by requesting these services. Importantly, not all residents are equally likely to request services from government when government fails to address a need. In this study, we examine which areas are more likely to produce requests for services from government when faced with a common service need: potholes.

We use 311 reports to measure resident demand for specific kinds of services – in our case, pothole repair. Many localities in the U.S. have adopted 311 systems as a way for residents to request government services. For practitioners, 311 systems are a valuable means of connecting with residents. For researchers, 311 reports are a valuable source of data, providing information on what service was requested, when and where the request was made, and how the locality responded to the request. We study potholes because it is easy to measure whether potholes have been serviced, local governments have nearly full autonomy to repair potholes, and residents are widely in favor of reducing potholes. Ultimately, we wanted to understand whether and to what extent requests for pothole repairs varied according to the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of a city neighborhood, anticipating that requests for services made via 311 systems may follow patterns seen in other forms of political participation.

We apply a three-part general model for understanding how local governments provide public services, which breaks down according to need for services, demand for services, and service provision. Need reflects what residents require, demand represents the expression of need by residents to government, and service provision is the action that the government takes to meet the need and/or demand for services. In our study, we focus on how need (the presence of potholes) translates into demand (a 311 request about a pothole placed by a resident).

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Figure 1. General model for local service provision

Our dataset includes 311 reports on potholes in Houston, Texas from 2016 to 2020. Houston is a useful case since it has a long-running 311 system and an economically and demographically diverse population. Potholes were a salient policy priority in Houston during this period. We secured data on the number of potholes proactively filled by the City of Houston in a FOIA request, which we use as a proxy for pothole presence within a census tract. To evaluate area demand, we utilize the number of 311 reports in each census tract. We measure a census tract’s socioeconomic status using a single variable constructed from several measures, including the poverty rate, median household income, and the percentage of residents who are high school and college graduates. We measure race as the percentage of Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents in a tract.

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Figure 2. Total 311 reports about potholes in Houston, TX from 2016 to 2020

We find that tracts with higher percentages of Black and Hispanic residents correlated with higher numbers of potholes. Lower socioeconomic status was also associated with more potholes. Despite being more likely to have potholes, we find that those same areas had fewer 311 reports. Instead, tracts with fewer Black and Hispanic residents, as well as those of higher socioeconomic status, were more likely to file 311 reports. Taken together, these results reveal that those areas of Houston with the most need for pothole remediation are least likely to demand it.

Our findings serve as a note of caution to local governments about the potential danger of overreliance on self-reporting systems like 311 to allocate public services. The case of potholes in Houston demonstrates that demand for services does not always align with need. Consequently, 311 systems have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities along lines of race and socioeconomic status if public administrators assume that individuals are equally likely to engage with these systems. We advise local governments to a) find ways to encourage greater 311 reporting more broadly, and b) proactively provide services, anticipating that some residents will be less likely to request services to meet unmet needs.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Cook, Scott J., Samantha Zuhlke and Robin Saywitz. 2024. “ Potholes, 311 Reports, and a Theory of Heterogeneous Resident Demand For City Services.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 647–669. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12540.

About the Authors

Scott J. Cook is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. The core aim of his research was to improve our ability to effectively learn about political processes from otherwise imperfect data. Examples of this work have been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, and the Annals of Applied Statistics.

Samantha Zuhlke is an assistant professor in the School of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Iowa. Her research examines how individuals relate to government and nonprofit organizations, particularly in the wake of government failure. Her work has been published by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. She previously worked at the National Geographic Society.

Robin Rose Saywitz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Louis University. Her research falls along three, often overlapping lines: environmental policy, political institutions and performance, and the drivers of human capital decisions in the bureaucracy.

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Nascent policy subsystems in polycentric governance networks: The case of sea-level rise governance in the San Francisco Bay Area

by Tara Pozzi, Elise Zufall, Kyra Gmoser-Daskalakis, & Francesca Vantaggiato

The biggest environmental policy challenges of our time cut across policy sectors and levels of governance. The wide scope of these issues requires collaboration across sectoral, geographical, and administrative boundaries. Recent literature utilizing the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has explored the behavior of nascent subsystems, which emerge in response to novel policy challenges and feature developing coalitions. 

However, we still lack an empirical approach to identify and analyze the structural characteristics of these nascent (i.e., emergent) subsystems and assess their implications for theoretical and subsystem development. How do we recognize a nascent policy subsystem when we see one, and what are the drivers of its coalitional structure?

This study builds and expands upon Ingold et al.’s (2017) study of nascent fracking policy subsystems in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, which found that network structure was better explained by actors’ secondary policy beliefs and former collaborative relationships than by actors’ deep core beliefs. We examine the case of the governance of sea-level rise (SLR) adaptation in the San Francisco Bay Area (SF Bay Area), utilizing a 2018 online survey to identify whether its governance system is nascent, whether actors’ policy core beliefs (specific to the subsystem) form discernible advocacy coalitions, and whether those beliefs inform network partner selection.

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Employing community detection methods and a Bayesian model for statistical analysis of networks (the Bayesian Exponential Random Graph Model, or BERGM) to test for core policy belief homophily between actors, we found that the network does not divide into fully fledged coalitions (illustrated in Figure 1), and that belief homophily is a driver of network structure (Figure 2), suggesting that coalitions are emerging. Moreover, we determined that emerging coalitions dovetail existing policy divides in the SF Bay Area around environmental protection and environmental justice goals.

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Taken together, these results suggest that coalition formation in the nascent subsystem of SLR in the SF Bay Area is associated with actors’ beliefs imported from pre-existing, related subsystems. At present, communities do not display the adversarial coalitional structure consistent with mature subsystems; instead, overlapping membership by actors in communities creates a core-periphery structure consistent with a collaborative policy subsystem.

Our analysis has important implications for theory, methods, and practice. It shows that nascent subsystems addressing new collective action problems such as SLR derive at least part of their emerging structure from existing coalitions. However, most policy actors in our network display heterogeneous policy core beliefs which do not clearly refer to either pre-existing environmental protection or environmental justice coalitions. This underscores the role that learning plays in coalition formation, particularly when actors face new issues and need to gather information to form their positions. Thus, while pre-existing coalitions shape collaborative ties in the current network structure, they need not prevent the development of entirely new coalitions in the future. Additionally, our empirical approach for recognizing a nascent policy subsystem, parsing out its structural characteristics, and understanding the drivers of its structure can be replicated in other emerging policy subsystem studies.

The implications of this analysis for practice are twofold: for one, understanding the structure of nascent policy subsystems can alert policymakers to the likely trade-offs to be faced in decision-making; and secondly, tracking subsystem development can ensure policymakers include affected interests in the governance process.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Pozzi, Tara, Elise Zufall, Kyra Gmoser-Daskalakis and Francesca Vantaggiato. 2024. “ Nascent Policy Subsystems in Polycentric Governance Networks: The Case of Sea-level Rise Governance in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 561–581. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12549.

About the Authors

Tara Pozzi is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis and a Delta Science Fellow. Her research focuses on how governance networks influence effective climate adaptation policy and planning decision-making. Prior to UC Davis, she completed her M.S. in Human-Environment Systems from Boise State University and her B.S. in Civil Engineering from Santa Clara University.  

Website: https://tarapozzi.github.io/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-pozzi-74587856/ 

Elise Zufall is a PhD candidate in the Geography Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. Zufall studies the role of actor relationships, beliefs, and knowledge in environmental resource management and decision-making. Zufall received her M.S. and B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University.  

Kyra Gmoser-Daskalakis is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis. She studies collaborative environmental governance, with a particular focus on the implementation of multi-benefit green infrastructure. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Economics and Policy from UC Berkeley and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyra-gmoser-daskalakis-939375b3
X (Twitter): @kyraskyegd

Francesca Pia Vantaggiato is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London (UK). Her research focuses on how policy-makers and stakeholders use collaborative relationships to tackle change and uncertainty. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Policy Studies Journal and Global Environmental Change. Prior to King’s College London, Vantaggiato was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Science & Policy at the University of California, Davis.

Website: https://francescavantaggiato.github.io/ 
Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/fpvantaggiato.bsky.social 

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The Politics of Problems versus Solutions: Policymaking and Grandstanding in Congressional Hearings

by Jonathan Lewallen, Ju Yeon Park, & Sean M. Theriault

Many journalists, legislators, academics, and other commentators have lamented the recent state of U.S. policymaking and a seemingly increased emphasis on “message politics” and grandstanding at the expense of “serious” legislating.

Taking positions is an important part of political representation and grandstanding often gets traced to electoral motivations and incentives. Our new article, “The Politics of Problems versus Solutions: Policymaking and Grandstanding in Congressional Hearings,” finds another source: a focus on the problem space.

Many aspects of decision-making depend on whether we are focused on the problem space or the solution space. Simplifying problems involves using heuristics to narrow our attention on different potential focusing events and indicators. Navigating the solution space involves both consulting experts and making analogies to similar-enough alternatives adopted for other issues or in other governing jurisdictions.

We find evidence that the different focus on problems and solutions doesn’t just influence the kinds of information we pay attention to; it also influences how policymakers engage in deliberation and creates different political dynamics.

We compared Professor Park’s “Grandstanding Score,” which measures individual legislators’ intensity of sending political messages, across three types of U.S. congressional committee hearings: those focused only on the problem space, those focused on implementation of existing policies, and those focused on proposed alternatives.

Our analysis shows that hearings focused on the problem space have average grandstanding scores about 0.65 points higher than solution-focused hearings, and 1.41 points higher than implementation-focused hearings. 

We also find variation in grandstanding by policy topic using the Policy Agendas Project major topic codes. Specifically, hearings on issues like social welfare, law and crime, education, civil rights, macroeconomics, international affairs, and the environment tend to have significantly higher grandstanding scores. Hearings on technology and agriculture, on the other hand, tend to have significantly lower grandstanding scores.

Our research adds valuable insights to the ongoing discussion of legislative dysfunction in the United States, highlighting how the focus on problem politics at the expense of solution-driven deliberation has affected congressional behavior over time.

While our results are potentially good news for policymakers focused on implementing existing policy, they also present a few challenges to advocates looking to reduce messaging politics in Congress and encourage substantive policymaking. Grandstanding derives at least in part from both a focus on policy problems and the specific problems receiving attention; to some extent, grandstanding is baked into both the policy agenda and Congress’s responsibilities as a representative institution. Rather than trying to reduce grandstanding behavior, then, perhaps we need recommendations for encouraging the kinds of activities that counterbalance grandstanding.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Lewallen, Jonathan, Ju Yeon Park and Sean M. Theriault 2024. “ The Politics of Problems Versus Solutions: Policymaking and Grandstanding in Congressional Hearings.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 515–531. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12526.

About the Authors

Jonathan Lewallen is an associate professor of political science at the University of Tampa. His research focuses on agenda setting and the policy process and how issues and institutions evolve together over time. Dr. Lewallen’s book Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress was published in 2020 by the University of Michigan Press.

Ju Yeon (Julia) Park is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. Her research focuses on the public speeches and legislative behavior of members of U.S. Congress, and their impact on legislative processes and elections.

Sean M. Theriault is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

 

congress, congressional hearings, grandstanding