State Legislation Restricting and Enabling Local Governments in an Era of Preemption

• Author: Jonathan Day,Keith Boeckelman
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X211038482
• Subject Matter: Original Research General Interest Articles

State Legislation Restricting

and Enabling Local Governments

in an Era of Preemption

Keith Boeckelman

1

and Jonathan Day

1

Abstract

This paper assesses state efforts to both restrict and enable local government discretion by using data

from Project Vote Smart’s“Key Vote s”database. The results show that state legislation, both success-

ful and unsuccessful, is more likely to limit local autonomy than to enhance it, although both tenden-

cies occur. Republican legislators are more likely to support efforts to restrict discretion than

Democrats are. Further, preemption attempts are particularly evident on “hot button”issues, such

as guns, sexuality and gender roles, and immigration, although such initiatives are not necessarily

more likely to successfully become law, especially under conditions of divided government.

Keywords

preemption, state-local relations, local government

Introduction

One of the fundamental arguments for the

American federal system is that state and local

governments are “laboratories of democracy.”

It is a mistake to accept this analogy at face

value, as political pressures shape any attempt

to clinically weigh the costs and benef‌its of

outside policy experiments (Boushey 2010).

Moreover, state and local level politicians may

lack incentives to innovate for a variety of

reasons, ranging from risk aversion to the ques-

tionable impact of policy on electoral outcomes

(Schleicher 2017).

Nevertheless,the “laboratories of democracy”

ideal served as a rationale for devolution of

policy responsibilities to state governments

from the 1970s through the Great Recession.

More recently, local governments, including

those serving large metropolitan areas, have

become innovators. Katz and Nowak (2018, 2)

argue that “problem solvers now congregate

disproportionately at the local level.”Providing

local governments governing leeway can, at

least theoretically, heighten responsiveness and

policy creativity (Bowman and Kearney 2011).

Based on this premise, Zimmerman (2001, 9)

has argued that state governments should give

localities “wide discretionary authority to imple-

ment their policies,”as well as theaccompanying

f‌inancial support.

The current dynamics of the state–local rela-

tionship can hamper local-level innovation,

however (Goodman, Hatch and McDonald

2020). Local units do not enjoy the constitution-

ally protected autonomy that states do. While

1

Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois, USA

Corresponding Author:

Keith Boeckelman, Western Illinois University, Macomb,

Illinois, USA.

Email: KA-Boeckelman@wiu.edu

Original Research General Interest Articles

State and Local Government Review

2021, Vol. 53(3) 210-222

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X211038482

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