Political Behavior Blog

To examine these claims, Hopkins analyzes instances in which towns hold and approve debt override and exclusion votes to fund public goods. The findings indicate that in Massachusetts, all other factors being equal, a locality with increases in diversity over the period of the study was more likely to hold votes on debt exclusions. If these findings hold, Hopkins's research implies that if communities are to maintain adequate levels of provision in the face of demographic change, then policymakers should think of ways to help communities manage public expenditures in periods of increasing diversity. These implications are more optimistic than those provided to us by the existing literature, from which one can conclude that heterogeneous localities will not be able to provide the public goods its citizens need.

The audience responded positively to the paper. However, the audience urged greater complexity in the theoretical understanding of the ways in which diversity matters. First, the analysis might benefit from disaggregating different types of public goods--for instance, diversity may have opposite effects on expenditures for corrections than one would expect from this model. Second, the relationship between elites and voters remains a bit of a "black box" in this paper and should be explored further. One audience member also asked Hopkins to include the type of town or city government in the model.