While electoral accountability should be stronger when responsibilities are clearly assigned to one political office, the involvement of higher tiers of government is often associated with policies specifically designed to improve local accountability. This paper investigates the impact of centralization on local electoral accountability in the context of California’s school finance system. Results show that voters are responsive to differences in dropout rates and pupil-teacher ratios, and that incumbents are less likely to be reelected when a district’s degree of centralization is high. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 appears to have sharpened local electoral accountability.
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Paper provided by Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) in its series Working Papers with number
2009/33.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Health, Education, and Welfare H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
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