IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v47y2017i1p99-130..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Rise of Specialized Governance in American Federalism: Testing Links Between Local Government Autonomy and Formation of Special District Governments

Author

Listed:
  • Yu Shi

Abstract

In this article, I investigate whether the growth of special districts in the fifty states from 1972 to 2002 can be explained by choices made by local general-purpose governments in response to different degrees of government autonomy in the fiscal, institutional, and political system. Focusing on three dimensions of government autonomy—local government capacity, local government discretion, and local government importance—I find that the growth of certain types of special districts is in part a response to state laws constraining government autonomy of general-purpose governments. The findings also suggest that reliance on special districts by local general-purpose governments would decrease if they had stronger own-source revenue-raising capacities and more diversified tax revenue bases. In contrast with prior studies, the analysis provides limited evidence to support the notion that special districts are formed by general-purpose governments to circumvent fiscal restrictions, such as debt limits and tax and expenditure limitations.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu Shi, 2017. "The Rise of Specialized Governance in American Federalism: Testing Links Between Local Government Autonomy and Formation of Special District Governments," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 47(1), pages 99-130.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:47:y:2017:i:1:p:99-130.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjw025
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amiel, Lindsay & Deller, Steven & Stallmann, Judith, 2009. "The Construction of a Tax and Expenditure Limitation Index for the US," Staff Paper Series 536, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goodman, Christopher B & Leland, Suzanne M., 2017. "Do Cities and Counties Attempt to Circumvent Changes in their Autonomy by Creating Special Districts?," SocArXiv 3rd7v, Center for Open Science.
    2. Christopher B Goodman, 2018. "Usage of Specialized Service Delivery: Evidence from Contiguous Counties," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 48(4), pages 686-708.
    3. Goodman, Christopher B, 2019. "Patterns in Special District Creation and Dissolution," SocArXiv zwgjh, Center for Open Science.
    4. Steven Deller & Craig Maher & Judith Stallmann, 2021. "Do tax and expenditure limitations exacerbate rising income inequality?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 611-643, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlianne Patrick, 2014. "Does Increasing Available Non-Tax Economic Development Incentives Result in More Jobs?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(2), pages 351-386, June.
    2. Steven Deller & Judith I. Stallmann & Lindsay Amiel, 2012. "The Impact of State and Local Tax and Expenditure Limitations on State Economic Growth," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 56-84, March.
    3. Trang Hoang & Craig S. Maher, 2022. "Fiscal condition, institutional constraints, and public pension contribution: are pension contribution shortfalls fiscal illusion?," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 93-124, December.
    4. repec:rre:publsh:v:40:y:2010:i:2:p:145-58 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Yakovlev, Pavel & Tosun, Mehmet S. & Lewis, William P., 2012. "Legislative Term Limits and State Aid to Local Governments," IZA Discussion Papers 6456, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Judith I. Stallmann & Steven Deller & Lindsay Amiel & Craig Maher, 2012. "Tax and Expenditure Limitations and State Credit Ratings," Public Finance Review, , vol. 40(5), pages 643-669, September.
    7. Robert A. Greer & Dwight V. Denison, 2016. "Determinants of Debt Concentration at the State Level," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 111-130, December.
    8. Trang Hoang, 2023. "Public Pension Reform and Credit Quality of State Governments," Public Finance Review, , vol. 51(3), pages 368-431, May.
    9. Jeffrey Swanson & Namhoon Ki, 2020. "When Would a Democratic Governor Increase Social Welfare Funding? The Joint Moderation of a State's Economy and a Governor's Budgetary Authority," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(5), pages 634-656, September.
    10. Geiguen Shin & Jeremy L. Hall, 2018. "Exploring the Influence of Federal Welfare Expenditures on State-Level New Economy Development Performance: Drawing From the Diffusion of Innovation Theory," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 32(3), pages 242-256, August.
    11. Mahdavi, Saeid & Westerlund, Joakim, 2018. "Subnational government tax revenue capacity and effort convergence: New evidence from sequential unit root tests," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 174-183.
    12. Soyoung Park & Sungchan Kim, 2022. "The Effects of Fiscal Rules Based on Revenue Structure: Evidence from U.S State Governments," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 39(3), pages 763-781, October.
    13. Jason Shumberger & Akheil Singla, 2022. "Are tax and expenditure limitations constraining institutions or institutionally irrelevant? Evidence from Minnesota," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 3-33, December.
    14. Steven Deller & Craig Maher & Judith Stallmann, 2021. "Do tax and expenditure limitations exacerbate rising income inequality?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 611-643, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:47:y:2017:i:1:p:99-130.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.