Beyond Census Metrics: Toward a More Inclusive Understanding of Rurality and its Effects on Organizational Capacities in Georgia

Local government capacity is an essential precondition to government service delivery. However, previous research has indicated that rural governments frequently face capacity deficits relative to their urban and metropolitan counterparts. A dominant explanation for the relative lack of rural local government capacity is the difference in financial resources. However, this explains the difference between small and large governments, rather than considering other rural identifying characteristics. Using data from the 2019 Municipal Indicators Survey conducted by Georgia's Department of Community Affairs, this study investigates the nuanced relationship between rurality and local government capacities within the State of Georgia. Rather than relying on census-derived measures of rurality, a broad conceptualization of rurality is employed with diverse operationalization, including measures for various rural aspects including urban isolation (i.e., geographic distance from the nearest urban city or county), isolation from connective transit infrastructure, population levels as well as population density, and local government density (i.e., the number of nearby local governments). Findings reveal that greater urban and governmental isolation are negatively associated with response and anticipatory capacity, even when controlling for local government revenues and population. These results highlight the limitations of categorical U.S. federal measures in rural research, underscoring the importance of capturing within-rural variation to better understand urban-rural divides.