Forms of Government and Climate Change Policies in US Cities

It has long been believed that council-manager governments with professionally trained public managers are more efficiency oriented and insulated from political pressure than mayor-council governments. Despite the general acceptance of this conventional wisdom, empirical evidence to support the predicted differences in policy has been extremely hard to come by. Most studies have found no direct effect of form of government on expenditures or policy; the effect of local institutions has been indirect, working to amplify or reduce supplier or demander preferences. In contrast, this paper examines a unique dataset of sustainability efforts in governmental operations and the community, and reports evidence that forms of government are an important direct influence on the approach that communities take to sustainability. Council-manager government systems have a significant positive effect on efforts directed to governmental operations, but a negative effect on community efforts.