For the last 25 years I have either been a local official—a district attorney, mayor, and deputy mayor—or worked at Harvard Kennedy School with local officials. These officials tend to be pragmatists, looking for ways to build consensus and solve real day-to-day problems. Yet increasingly they find themselves thrust into battles with officials in other levels of government as polarization manifests itself into efforts from politicians to impose their views on as many others as possible.
Currently at the state level, Republican legislatures impose their will on more democratic cities by precluding initiatives like a higher minimum wage or gun control. Historically, the federal government has also attempted to impose controversial liberal policies like an individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act and a variety of requirements in federal funding programs prescribing wages that far exceed local norms and financial capacity.
These efforts undermine the local differences that are critical to democratic success. Prescriptive policies limit the ability of local governments to connect with their particular residents and reflect their preferences. Breaking away from the anti-democratic principle that the winner should exert power and influence on as many of the vanquished as possible, a better approach, more conducive to pragmatic problem solving and respectful of difference, would be for higher levels of government to defer to elected officials closer to the people they serve.
[For more on this story by STEPHEN GOLDSMITH, go to https://www.citylab.com/soluti...ing-localism/562310/]
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