When Local Governments Choose to Act and When They Have No Choice

• In Event: Poster Session: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics & Health Politics and Health Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Health Politics & Policy: Opioid Politics in the United States

Abstract

When John Kingdon famously argued that entrepreneurs couple three streams--—politics, policy, and problems—to put an item on the national agenda, he suggested that national policy actors have some latitude in what issues they choose to address and when. Does it work the same at the local level?
The opioid epidemic, which hit rural and suburban communities particularly hard, offers an opportunity to address this question. As opioid usage and overdose deaths became more prevalent, local officials noticed that there was a problem: coroners recorded more deaths, county clinics had more patients, and law enforcement responded to increased calls for help. Local officials, then, had to do something about the problem even if they did so in ways that were unhelpful.
Local officials do not have the luxury of waiting for issues to come to them, because the problems arrive in their communities whether they want them to or not. However, local actions to address problems may not be effective either because local governments (1) may lack capacity to address a problem of this magnitude or (2) may intentionally stymie initiatives they do not want in their communities, e.g., officials who block new medical facilities to treat substance-use disorder.
In this paper, we examine when local governments choose to act and how they act. We draw on interviews with three dozen state and local officials in New York State as well as official government documents to compare when and how local and federal officials act. Our findings challenge the widespread assumption that issues addressed at the local level are both smaller in scale and less complex than the federal level (e.g., potholes vs. healthcare) and offer insights into the agenda setting literature.

Authors

• Patricia Strach, University at Albany, SUNY

• Katherine Zuber

• Elizabeth Perez Chiques, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas