Councilor Deference and the Local Housing Supply: Observational and Experimental Evidence

• In Event: Political Institutions, Public Preferences, and Regulation of the Housing Supply in American Cities

Abstract

A canonical theory of urban politics, councilor deference holds that members of a local legislature defer to the preferences of the district's city councilor when deciding land uses localized within that district (Banfield and Wilson 1963). Rooted in the logic of reciprocal noninterference, the theory predicts that councilors trade votes on one another's district-level land use decisions, insulating local development from citywide majorities. Despite its prominence in urban political theory, empirical tests of councilor deference face persistent endogeneity, as councilor and council-wide preferences are deeply intertwined and difficult to disentangle with observational data alone.

This paper provides new evidence on when councilor deference shapes housing permitting. We draw on two complementary data sources. First, we survey more than 350 district-elected local legislators, combining a survey experiment with open-ended responses that reveal how councilors understand and justify district-based deference. The experimental component allows us to isolate conditions under which deference is invoked rather than merely assumed, while the qualitative responses illuminate the causal mechanisms councilors themselves invoke. Second, we exploit redistricting as an exogenous change in electoral geography. Redistricting reassigns neighborhoods to new council districts, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the political representation of specific parcels. Using panel data from 200 US cities between 1990 and 2020, we test whether housing development patterns shift following redistricting in ways consistent with councilor deference.

Together, the study assesses the conditionality of councilor deference—identifying the institutional, political, and demographic contexts in which deference operates most powerfully and those in which it fails. The findings carry implications for debates about housing supply constraints, local veto points, and the design of land use governance more broadly. By clarifying when local legislative institutions constrain housing supply, this paper advances both the empirical study of urban politics and policy conversations about why American cities struggle to build the housing their residents need.

Author

• Michael Hankinson, George Washington University
  Presenting Author