Overall Research Project Description This project explores state preemption, or situations in which laws passed by state governments takes precedence over a law passed by local governments. Increasingly, we see that U.S. states deploy the power of preemption to forcibly usurp the policies of their local governments, ensuring that state laws take precedence over local laws.
While state preemption of local governments is not new, it has become more prevalent and aggressive over the last decade. Moreover, state preemption has become increasingly concerning to local officials, who fear their autonomy is under attack. State-local conflicts due to preemption threaten intergovernmental harmony, so it is crucial to understand what drives them.
To that end, I seek to answer two questions. First, under what political and institutional conditions do local officials oppose preemption by their state? Second, what actions do local officials take to resist preemption by their state? To answer these questions, I conduct an original survey experiment of local officials across the U.S., in which respondents read a prompt explaining a hypothetical scenario about them being preempted by their state government.
The main task of my interns will be to help me with data collection of local officials’ contact and demographic information. This project will help interns acquire data collection skills and coding skills in software like Excel, which are great ways to stand out on graduate school and job applications.