Concede or Resist? Experimental Evidence on How Partisanship Shapes Local Officials’ Responses to Preemption

Does partisanship shape local officials’ opposition and resistance to state preemption? To answer this question, I report on two pre-post, between-subjects survey experiments and open-ended responses from more than 1,000 local government officers. Across both experiments, I find that local officials are substantially more opposed to preemption from an out-party state government and significantly more supportive of preemption from an in-party state government. Moreover, local officials are more (less) willing to take action to resist preemption—including legal action, refusing to comply, initiating a resolution, and advocating for more autonomy—when they learn that an out-party (in-party) state government is attempting preemption. The open-ended responses of local officials corroborate the results of the survey experiments. This research has important implications for state-local government relations and how elected governments represent their constituents in our federal system.