A policy-focused approach to understanding the role of interest groups in US municipal governments.
Local politics in the United States once seemed tranquil compared to the divisiveness and dysfunction of the country’s national politics. Those days have passed. As multiple wide-ranging crises have thrust America’s local governments into the spotlight, they have also exposed policy failures and systemic problems that have mounted for years. While issues such as policing and the cost of housing are debated nationally, much of the policymaking surrounding these issues occurs locally. In Local Interests, Sarah F. Anzia explores how local governments—and the interest groups that try to influence them—create the policies that drive the national conversation: policing, economic development, housing, and challenges of taxing and spending.
Anzia examines local interest groups in terms of the specific policies they pursue, including how these groups get active in politics and what impact they have. By offering new perspectives on these issues, Anzia contributes to our knowledge of how interest groups function and the significant role they play in shaping broader social outcomes.
It's not written like a normal book, it sort of just a lit review of a bunch of papers. It was interesting enough, especially the chapter that goes over the role of developers in politics. Also all of the evidence was in the form of correlations rather than causality which was a little bit of a let down, they even went into some depth on the problem of endogeneity but never addressed it.