Local politicians’ advice networks and the prospect of metropolitan civil society

ABSTRACT

Intergovernmental relations among local government officials in U.S. metropolitan areas have been depicted as the foundation for metropolitan governance. Institutions, including councils of government and metropolitan planning organizations, help broker contacts across large metropolitan regions, yet little attention has been given to the actual patterns of intergovernmental communication and advice seeking by elected officials. Using original survey data from the San Francisco Bay Area, this research investigates the structure of local elected officials’ advice networks at the city level. Though both theory and government reform efforts predict an interconnected metropolitan region, elected officials’ advice-seeking patterns are highly constrained by county lines and correlate with partisanship and select demographic variables. If advice networks are a measure of metropolitan governance, then the San Francisco Bay Area may be characterized by polycentric intergovernmental relations rather than dense metropolitan civil society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Similar studies have used one respondent to report for the jurisdiction as a whole (e.g., Andrew, Short, Jung, & Arlikatti, 2015; Ansell et al., 2017; Kwon, Feiock, & Bae, 2014). Others collect data from multiple respondents within a unit but focus on theoretical questions of individual-level consequence. For an example, Considine, Lewis, and Alexander (2009) study the roles of bureaucrats and politicians in local government innovation and sought to understand the level of the organization at which innovations diffuse. Siciliano’s (2015) investigation of advice networks among teachers is also illustrative of the value of individual-level network research. His study is motivated by questions about actor attributes and perceptions of peer competition, which must be studied at the individual level. Though some research questions conceptually require a focus on individual-level relationships, using individual-level reports for city-level analysis is appropriate for this investigation.

2. Correlating responses by mayors and out-degree centrality yields a smaller correlation of 0.3, which indicates that mayors seek advice from slightly more sources than council members. The quadratic assignment procedure was used to test the significance of the association between the advice network structures for mayors and city council members (Cranmer, Leifeld, McClurg, & Rolfe, 2017). The test shows a statistically discernable (p < .000) correlation of 0.279 between the matrices. This level of association indicates that the advice networks of mayors and council members are sufficiently similar that the same pattern is unlikely to occur at random, yet the correlation is not so high as to suggest that the advice-seeking behaviors of the two groups are identical.

3. I thank an anonymous review for this suggestion and for broader comments on the challenges that attend the aggregation of data at the city level.

4. The cities include Davis, Fresno, Hollister, Long Beach, Santa Cruz, Ukiah, and Winters. Davis was named twice. The other cities were named only once.

5. More information about the Cities Association of Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley Clean Energy can be found online: https://citiesassociation.org/.

6. The survey instrument for this study did not include questions about county-level or submetropolitan institutions, though open responses in the surveys provide anecdotal evidence that these venues are used for intergovernmental communication. Due to the varying degrees of formality of these institutions, future studies are urged to conduct careful fieldwork to identify these institutions in advance of survey design.

7. Mullin (2009) has also taken up the question of scale from Dahl and Tufte (1973) in an important and illuminating analysis of special district governance in California. Dahl (1967) also engaged the question of cities and scale in his presidential address to the American Political Science Association.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Political Science Association (Small Research Grant Program).

Notes on contributors

Eric S. Zeemering

Eric S. Zeemering is an Associate Professor and MPA Director in the School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia. His research investigates collaborative local governance, including interlocal contracting, local politicians’ roles in metropolitan governance, and urban sustainability. He is the author of Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Cities: Economy, Environment and Community in Baltimore.