IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v49y2019i3p540-559..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State Preemption of Local Authority: Explaining Patterns of State Adoption of Preemption Measures

Author

Listed:
  • Luke Fowler
  • Stephanie L Witt

Abstract

State preemption of local policymaking has attracted increasing attention from scholars, public officials, and citizens, as states have prevented local governments from boosting the minimum wage, regulating firearms, and barring certain forms of discrimination, among other policies. Although scholars have examined the legal dimensions of state preemption and analyzed preemption in specific areas, we lack a comprehensive account of which states have adopted preemption laws and why some states are more active than others in adopting them. Using a dataset drawing on preemption legislation in seventeen policy areas, we test support for competing explanations for variation in adoption of state preemption measures. Our general conclusion is that political factors are more significant than institutional features in explaining state preemption activity. More specifically, and consistent with expectations, we find preemption measures are more likely to be adopted by Republican-controlled states. We also find that legislative professionalism, political culture, and home-rule status are correlated with the prevalence of preemption measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Luke Fowler & Stephanie L Witt, 2019. "State Preemption of Local Authority: Explaining Patterns of State Adoption of Preemption Measures," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 49(3), pages 540-559.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:49:y:2019:i:3:p:540-559.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjz011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David M Konisky & Paul Nolette, 2022. "The State of American Federalism 2021–2022: Federal Courts, State Legislatures, and the Conservative Turn in the Law," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 52(3), pages 353-381.
    2. Goodman, Christopher B & Hatch, Megan E. & McDonald, Bruce D. III, 2020. "State Preemption of Local Laws: Origins and Modern Trends," SocArXiv u2f4x, Center for Open Science.
    3. McDonald, Bruce D. III & Goodman, Christopher B & Hatch, Megan E., 2020. "Tensions in State-Local Intergovernmental Response to Emergencies: The Case of COVID-19," OSF Preprints cnzt6, Center for Open Science.
    4. Monica Hubbard & Luke Fowler, 2021. "Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(1), pages 76-96, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:49:y:2019:i:3:p:540-559.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.