Law Commons^™

This paper analyzes the lack of civic engagement in local government decision-making and the problems that result from it. I consider one explanation as viewed through public choice theory: dominant special interest groups capture local governments for their own private interests. Thus, average citizens are not only alienated from their local government, but they also find the barriers to entry into local politics too high for collective action and participation. While at first glance this account seems descriptively accurate, public choice theory has normative limitations in explaining local governments because it fails to recognize these features of the local politics …

Due, in part, to Justice Brandeis' famous dissent, many have presumed that the states are the most fertile ground for policy innovation. However, with their transformation from smaller urban and rural centers to major metropolitan regions, local governments may prove even more fruitful agents of social change and laboratories for policy experimentation. Indeed, local governments are critical components of our federal system and embody the values of federalism both in theory and practice. Local governments have trailblazed in legal and policy arenas where the federal and state governments could not (or would not) engage: gay rights and gay marriage, campaign …