municipal identity

future work might pay greater attention to intra-statevariation in ballot initiative support as it pertains to the signalingmechanism

but future work might pay more attentionto the implications of substate decisions—and resulting potentialintra-state variation

i have shown thatthe policy landscapes in the states they represent affect the behav-ior of members of Congress.

this suggests that state-level legalization has notdisproportionately improved public opinion in the states where itis adopted, thus suggesting that public opinion shifts are not driv-ing observed effects.

would make it more difficult for graham to continue toblock legislation liberalizing marijuana policy at the federal level

made marijuana such a priority in the 116thCongress.

in addition to using its growing resources for lobbying andcampaign contributions, the marijuana industry has leveraged itseconomic growth to engage politically by mobilizing consumersand employees

the data reveal a sharp increasein lobbying from the marijuana industry coinciding with recentstate adoption of adult-use legalization

$130 per capita(an average of over a billion dollars in revenue

ifind that neither time since the initiative nor score of the initiativevote is associated with pro-marijuana behavior in Congress

state legalization had a stronger effect on roll-call votes on dOJ interference (which only would affect legalizingstates) than on roll-call votes for the MOre act

would have the strongest effects on support forsimilar federal legalization bills

political learning, and one mentioned policylearning

i do not find thatlegalization had a statistically significant effect on roll-call votingfor this bill.

Citizen initiatives and Billsponsorship Pre- and Post-Legalization Wave

we would expect an associationbetween initiative rules and congressional behavior on marijuanabefore the legalization wave

in-crease of .06 in the bill sponsorship score

which may be driven by the fact that sponsor-ship of this bill was more partisan than the others

demonstrate that citizen initiative rules are astrong instrument for legalization.

the saFe Banking act, the states act, and the MOreact

use took placelong before the 116th Congress.

this suggests that initiatives are atleast conditionally exogenous to congressional behavior on mari-juana issues.

generally holds more liberal views onmarijuana than representatives in state legislatures.

initiated a wave of state medical marijuana laws

total of $3.5 billion inlegal sales in 2014 to over $13.5 billion in legal sales in 2019

with a full 92% of those arrests just for posses-sion

xogenous variation in likelihood oflegalization

a greater share of variation in member be-havior is explained by partisanship, so a competitive district mightbe represented very differently depending on the outcome of aclose election

Public policies can also shapethe way citizens view government, and through these interpretiveeffects (Pierson 1993) shift political behavior

High taxes on marijuana are often used to fundstate programs in areas like education and criminal justice, andalso to bolster general fund revenues.

members of Congress have an incentive to sup-port policies that benefit business interests central to economiesin the places they represent

the organized interests that develop and growtheir economic presence will also have greater political sway

which types of firms establish and grow

in this way, the advocacy of regulated firmscan lead to the upward diffusion of state policies

they do not find similar resultsin the senate

in particular, whetherthey generated political gains for the politicians sponsoring them

this type of “snowball effect,” where prior policy adoptionat lower levels of government increases the likelihood of adop-tion at higher levels, tends to dominate a potential “pressure valve”effect—whereby lower-level adoption relieves pressure for policyadoption at the higher level

Put simply, policy makers often prefer to enact policiesthat have been shown to be effective in other contexts

find that state policy decisions in the area ofelectronic commerce have only minor effects on national represen-tation in Congress that diminish over the course of the legislativeprocess

and top-down vertical dif-fusion from the national level to the states

While there is much literature demonstrating dynamicsof horizontal policy diffusion across the states

voter behavior or interest groupmobilization, but also on the actions of lawmakers in Congress

these ef-fects are most likely to manifest in policy areas like energy andlabor in which both state and federal governments are active policymakers,

i find little support forthe view that effects were driven by positive shifts to public favora-bility caused by state legalization

isthat initiative votes generated a signal that allowed members ofCongress to learn about levels of constituent support

hasgenerated meaningful political-economic shifts in the states whereit was adopted.

can affect the ability of organ-ized economic interests to engage in politics and make demandson representatives in Congress.

Marijuana legaliza-tion allowed for the growth of a new industry that, once devel-oped, could sway gardner’s re-election bid

that is, members learn about policy innovationsadopted in the states they represent, and as a result are more likelyto sponsor and vote for similar policies nationally

has gained leverage in Colorado politics, compel-ling even conservative politicians like gardner to support industrydemands

influence of industry

instrumental variables analysis indicates le-galization influenced pro-marijuana bill sponsorship and roll calls in the 116thCongress.

empirically, i examine theeffects of state marijuana legalization

Members of Congress represent geographically demarcated districts em-bedded in subnational policy environments.

The practiceof this prosecutorial discretion is surprisingly political

The purpose of this study is to show that the presidentialuse of rhetoric is consistent with his motivation for managerial control of thepublic bureaucracy

Aggregated across the 89 districts, this reveals a sub-stantial impact by presidential statements at the case-processing level

Attorneys shifted thecomposition of their caseload in areas where drugs are considered a publicproblem

Local Priority Opinion

presidential signaling in that context

Clearly, the implementation of the War on Drugsinvolved the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

the first examines cases handled and the second casesconcluded.

which helps clarify causality andaddresses concerns about potential endogeneity

Reader’s Guide to Periodical Liter-ature (extended to cover our time span). If media changes affect the Attorneys,we expect that the drug composition increases as mentions rise.

We test the hypothesis thatthe U.S. Attorneys’ agenda is positively influenced by congressional attentivenessto drug policy issues.

This accounts for theresources provided by Congress and the president to the DEA for bringingcharges in drug cases.

by which cases are referredby investigating agencies

We expectthat the Attorneys’ offices’ attention to drug cases will be positively influencedby the degree of presidential rhetorical emphasis on drug policy.

I had to figurethese things out like any other American, by studying his speeches and reading newspapers

presidents’ prioritization of drug policy in their public discourse.

when an Attorney prosecutes it incourt.

U.S. Attorneys’ prosecution of drug crimes: as the composi-tion of presidential statements regarding narcotics increased, the narcotics com-position of the U.S. Attorneys’ caseloads also increased.

Their relative independence puts a premium on other less formalcontrol mechanisms

but the U.S. Attorney retains the final decisionto prosecute

Overall, total federal spending increased from 1.5 billiondollars in 1981 to 9.7 billion dollars in 1990

by“communication, exhortation, [and] symbolic position taking

political leaders mayexercise agency leadership by choosing and expounding common goals throughpublic rhetoric,

because of specific monitoringproblems inherent in principal-agency settings

Rhetoric is a means for pres-idents to offer and secure a national agenda

We address the president’s ability toaffect the attention patterns of public agencies by sending policy priority signalsthrough public rhetoric.

exercised in part through politi-cal appointees

shows that presidential atten-tion drives public concern in economic, foreign, and civil rights policy

Presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administra-tive agents over whom he seeks managerial control

twenty-first century

state’s second face and must work to build a less distortedaccount of American politics that reflects—as more than an unfortunate anomaly—the politicallives of RCS communities.

repression, subjugation, and social control

rather than as resourceful, creative, anddeliberate political actors

strengthen racial learning,diminish faith in the American Dream, reduce individuals’ senses of their equal worth, exacerbateperceptions of individual and group discrimination, and cultivate “serious misgivings about theextent of equality

genuine physi-cal education through which the individual interiorizes his social position

In this way, police act as messengers for therules of a racialized class system, teaching people in RCS communities what to wear and howto comport themselves, which public spaces to avoid, and what kinds of actions are forbidden tothem

assuming the position of a second-class citizen, or three-fifths of a citizen, or a denizen, oran at-will citizen allowed autonomy only at the discretion of the law officer

take thestand” to demonstrate their law-abidingness before ever going to court

experiences of pain into collective narratives

of identity and practices ofsocial valuation

criminal stigmabecomes a wellspring of racial stigma

Brandedas criminals, individuals experience limited access to social, political, and economic goods, rangingfrom jobs, professional licensing, and even school opportunities to social welfare benefits andvoting

basis of appearance: baggy pants, red or blue clothes

symbolically marking RCS communities as in need of oversightand contrasting their residents against “law-abiding” citizens who need protection from threat-ening elements in RCS communities

Police encounters in public spaces functionas daily rituals indicating who is suspicious, who can be trusted with freedoms, and who deservesthe benefits afforded to citizens in full standing;

Rather, political actors construct and reconstruct race as they use institutions to dividepopulations, define the terms of their relations, and subject them to different modes of governance

Yet our subfield has little to say about how policing and criminal justice constructrace and class themselves, or indeed how policing itself may “recreate and enforce the country’sracial divide

functions that provided broad and amorphous powers to deeply intervene into the daily lives ofthe urban poor

In the JimCrow South, welfare officials facilitated the exploitation of black workers by applying “employablemother” rules, using vague eligibility rules to deny benefits, inspecting homes for moral violations,or simply shuttering the welfare office when hands were needed in the fields

“mental health facilitators,school disciplinarians, public housing managers, and guards against park trespassing

to discipline clients and aggressively investigate and prosecutecases of welfare fraud as felonies

this profile fits nearly perfectly the classic Europeanmodel of a state against which the U.S. is usually contrasted.

This engendersin him a distrust and resentful attitude toward all public authorities and law officers

hey are subject to state failures to provide securityfrom violence and deprivation (see, e.g., Kennedy 1998, Muhammad 2010, Fortner 2015, Leovy2015, Miller 2016), yet also subject to state projects of repression and discipline that work to sus-tain subjugation

Residents turnto the police in an effort to mobilize state powers on their behalf, and they target police when theyrise up to contest state powers over their lives.

police stops and criminal custody have become normal and expected experiencesof government

governcitizens, regulate their behaviors, revoke their freedoms, redefine their civic standing, and imposeviolence on them

apolitical

ordinary citizens

urban neighborhoods and serviced race- andclass-based residential segregation

The new regime “creat[ed]hundreds of thousands of additional contacts between police and the policed

urban problem solvers

disciplining poor and disordered communities,targeting people not because they were serious criminals but because they were precarious andpowerless: policing based on “their status as people with problems but without property

Yet scores of studies revealed troubling evidence:High-volume stops and low-level arrests were weakly correlated with crime but showed a strongconnection to race, poverty, and place

were to the newgeneration what the Jim Crow rituals had been to the generation before

target areas, find suspicious individuals, question them until they consent to search, and get luckyby finding something on them

elimination of disorder and theregulatory enforcement of codes against disordered people and places.

Figuratively speaking, it was thewindows community members had broken and failed to repair that now conveyed and fomenteddisrespect and disregard for the law

Civil order violations and misdemeanor offenses rosequickly and became a far more frequent gateway to criminal adjudication, as arrested individualsfrequently pled guilty to small-time infractions to avoid sitting in jail

argument was that police should moveaggressively against minor infractions, no matter how peripheral to public safety they seemed

federal resources flowed to local police with little categorical restraints onhow they should be spent.

(and what they teach by what they do) has implications beyond policing.

expanded, deepened, and routinizedpolice involvement in the daily lives of RCS communities

the growing infrastructure of immigrationpolicing

including those with police, jails, courts, bail offices, housingauthorities, and the gamut of other street-level bureaucracies that encircle the poor.

from too much government engagement—in the forms of supervision,interference, and predation.

has been diverted from serious political analysis of policing andrelated criminal justice operations by its steady focus on national contests over electoral and policyoutcomes

officials that exercise social control and encompassvarious modes of coercion, containment, repression, surveillance, regulation, predation, discipline,and violence.

second face

black and Latino residents as suspect populations andsubjecting them to similar projects of “extractive policing” and “government seizure”

extract revenues for the municipality

through coercion,containment, repression, surveillance, regulation, predation, discipline, andviolence

some

I G U R E

In a nationof 18,000 law enforcement agencies, discussions of“policing” writ large may often mask importantheterogeneity.

mean that effects areestimated with substantially more noise.

F I G U R E

Black and White offi-cers, and (3) Hispanic and White officers, as wellas conditional Democratic–Republican comparisonswithin

Democraticand Republican officers

all instances of the number “8”appear to have been manually deleted from datesand times in the use-of-force data, requiring imputa-tion to remedy; and (3) civilian ethnicity was excludedfrom stop data despite evidence that HPD tracks thisinformation for its annual reports

if officers from differ-ent social identities do not treat civilians differently,there is little reason to suspect AR is occurring.

We usethese covariates, along with 2015–2019 five-year Amer-ican Community Survey data, to evaluate PR

However,even in the district with the highest share of Repub-lican residents, civilians are roughly 9% Republican.

In the division with the lowest share ofRepublican residents, only 2% of civilians are Repub-lican, compared to 37% of officers

T A B L E

Results show police officers diverge from their juris-dictions on every attribute we measure.

if each current officer was insteadreplaced with a random draw from their respectivejurisdiction while holding agency sizes fixed

agency level. For officer race and gender, we rely onagency responses to federal surveys, avoiding the esti-mated voter file proxies. In our behavioral analysis ofChicago and Houston, we use voter file measures ofparty identification but rely on individual-level racialdata obtained through open-records requests.

officers can provide AR fortheir partisan group without identifying or knowinglyinteracting with individual copartisans.

so stronglytied to matters of race, officers may actively repre-sent copartisans indirectly through their treatmentof various civilian racial groups

tooccur when the salience of a relevant identity increases

staffing agencies withworkers who share values with the population at largewill promote desirable outputs

bureaucratic oversight is often incapable of ensuringthat bureaucrats will exercise discretion in desirableways

diverging from partisanpreferences on policing policy in the general popula-tion

Each test compares officers deployed tocomparable places, times, and tasks, ensuring officerbehavior is always evaluated against behavior by peersfacing common circumstances

e.g., selec-tively analyzing only the subset of situations whereofficers chose to make stops or issue citations

every sin-gle district in Chicago and nearly every division inHouston is policed by officers who skew more Repub-lican than local residents

police officers are notonly more likely to affiliate with the Republican Party,they also have higher household income, vote moreoften, and are more likely to be White.

And how do officers with differ-ing partisan affiliations behave when interacting withthose civilians?

olice officers experience nosuch constraint

Our results suggest that despite Republicans’ preference formore punitive law enforcement policy and their overrepresentation in polic-ing, partisan divisions often do not translate into detectable differences inon-the-ground enforcement.

Police skew more Republican than their jurisdictions,with notable exceptions.

We need toobserve the intervening political processes—and toaccount for a wide range of alternative mechanisms

nce local demographicsstabilize, and with them residents’ expectations,diverse localities face no special barriers to raisingtaxes.

ethnically charged battles in Massachu-setts communities in this period.

Above all, the centrality ofelites in the decision to hold a tax vote emerges fromthe newspaper articles.

can transform political agendas, with aspecial impact on easily ignored, long-term issues

But the evidence shows the opposite:that increases in diversity shape the holding of votesmore than their eventual success

Preference divergenceis one such mechanism

have markedeffects on those towns’ willingness to make long-termpublic investments

But whatmany researchers have missed is the role of changes indiversity.

The results are also robust to the inclusion ofseveral economic and fiscal variables (e.g., unemploy-ment rate) and several measures of community stabil-ity (e.g., the percent of people in the same home in1985 and 1990). The results are not driven by housingprices or the change in housing prices, an alternativepathway through which diversity might shape prop-erty tax rates.

2.950

many of the most predictive variablesare economic measures such as the tax rate and themedian household income.

and included 15indicator variables denoting how long since the lastoccurrence of the dependent variable.15 Year indicatorvariables capture unobserved time effects.

This analysis shows that changing diversity—but notthe baseline level of diversity—matters in predictingdebt exclusion vote

Evidence: Diversity’s Impact

Avg. CommuteTime 90

it compares towns that pass increases to allothers, limiting the selection bias induced by thetown officials’ decision to hold the vote.

so wecannot use the election results as a straightforwardestimate of public preferences

leaders in diversecommunities will propose spending initiatives notsupported by their constituents—and so will seethem fail at the ballot box.

iverse communities’lower social capital might in turn dampen theircollective willingness to make public investments.

with opportunities toattract new voters, to gain recognition, and to ad-vance their agenda. These divisive questions can alsodivide local leaders and generate lasting cleavages,making it harder to bring together a coalition in sup-port of increased taxes.

So long as it shapesresidents’ long-term expectations, diversity couldmatter without becoming a visible topic of localpolitics

increasesin ethnic and racial diversity will mostly affect resi-dents’ support for capital projects and other long-termplans

Sociologists have demonstrated that racial andethnic considerations are often paramount when in-dividuals consider where to move.

moving decisions

Other work has shown that localdiversity shapes attitudes towards public spendingonly when race and ethnicity are highly politicized

a diverse locality might lead whites tosee public spending as having diminishing benefitsfor them

perceived

When called to the ballot box, local voters are likelyto know when the proposal will come to fruition.While current spending provides tangible benefits inthe near-term, capital investments take years, and sorequire both significant trust in the taxing authorityand a broad construction of one’s self-interest.

The second is that each ethnic group’sutility level for a given public good is reduced if othergroups also use it’

One is that different ethnic groups have differentpreferences over which type of public goods toproduce

By shaping whether towns ever considernew tax proposals, rising diversity can have a stealthimpact even absent visible and contentious localpolitical battles

the effect is strong only on votesabout long-term capital spending, suggesting thatdemographic changes operate in part by narrowingpeople’s time horizons.