The Personnel Costs of Nationalization

The nationalization of politics creates new challenges for local public officials in the United States. We argue the intrusion of nationalized policy conflicts into local governments will increase turnover among local officeholders by reducing the benefits and increasing the costs of occupying these positions. Focusing on local education politics, we develop new measures of nationalization to document an increase in conflictual school board meetings centered on topics drawn from the national policy agenda. We then show these nationalized conflicts lead to change in who holds school district superintendent positions, contributing to the elevated levels of superintendent turnover in recent years. Our findings show nationalized policy conflicts can alter the character of local government by generating personnel change in a key policymaking position.

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Host or Publisher UCR School of Public Policy