Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Does the decentralization of representation affect the amount and distribution of public “bads”? The California Voting Rights Act of 2001 has enabled law firms to threaten litigation against the vast majority of California cities with at-large city councils, triggering a wave of conversions from centralized (at-large) to decentralized (district-based) decision making bodies (city councils). We leverage this conditionally exogenous treatment to measure the effect of district-based city councils on the annual number of new housing permits issued, the structural composition of those housing permits, and the spatial distribution of those permits within each city. By measuring the relationship between permits and their host neighborhood’s socio-economic traits, we capture the degree to which decentralized representation enhances the political influence of minority interests in a decision making body. In all, this study advances our understanding of the effect of representation on both aggregate social welfare and the equity of distributive outcomes in local political economy.