The Local Power & Politics Review Examines State-Local Preemption and Conflict Across 7 Policy Fields

In 2018 and 2019, ChangeLab Solutions and the Local Solutions Support Center partnered to confront the ongoing misuse of state preemption legislation against the nation’s cities. Over a series of four convenings, invited researchers, practitioners, advocates, and funders from across the country met and discussed the trends and effects of preemption on local housing policy, public health, and policies promoting economic opportunity and equity. Through these discussions, the scope of state efforts to diminish local governing capacity and authority became increasingly clear, as did the hostility and political motives of those seeking to constrain local power, and the potential effects of that hostility on local democracy, community wellbeing, and citizens’ lives.

Those who attended the preemption convenings could not have predicted state hostility and preemption within the context of the pandemic, but they did predict a continuation of state hostility, and they connected that hostility to its ability and likelihood to negatively impact human health and well-being. Calls for the sharing of ideas, intervention strategies, and information and resource needs followed. From these discussions came repeated appeals for better connections between researchers and research findings and advocates, as well as between researchers working within different policy fields.

The Local Power and Politics Review was created to address this disconnect. Fourteen authors were tasked with working as advocate-researcher co-authors to produce short articles highlighting recent research findings, emerging issues, and data and research needs across seven policy fields: Public Health; Local Fiscal Authority; Labor Policy; Environmental Policy; Civil Rights and Discrimination; Housing Policy; and Emerging Technologies.

The resulting articles offer insight into the state-local political environment as it appears in each policy field. The authors suggest the potential effects of local constraints and, when available, point the reader to evidence-based research findings. Attempts to recover local power are discussed, often with calls for research into the efficacy of specific approaches, such as preemption repeal or litigation. Finally, each article suggests specific avenues for future research.