Participation and Representation in City Council Meetings

• In Event: New Evidence on Citizen Voice in Development Permitting

Abstract

Local government represents the primary form of public participatory democracy in the United States, and is one of the only remaining venues where politicians systematically interact with constituents in the course of their official business. As such, city council meetings present a compelling setting to examine the interplay of councilmember speech, public comment, and policy outcomes. However, existing datasets of local government speech typically have inadequate coverage to answer such questions. In this project, we compile and transcribe a novel dataset of approximately 30,000 city council meetings from over 110 cities in California over the last decade. We link this data to voter record files, property value assessments, and municipal election data to construct a holistic view of who is participating, what is being discussed, and how city council meeting discussion relates to policy outcomes, analysis which is particularly salient for contentious topics such as affordable housing development.

Author

• Olivia Hope Martin, Stanford University
  Presenting Author