As I noted in my last post, the absence of partisan competition in city council elections in big cities at the seat-by-seat level or for control of overall local legislatures poses a substantial challenge to our understanding of what parties do. Although under-studied, people have attempted to explain why there is no such competition before.
These explanations come in two flavors, one focusing on the types of issues in local politics and the other focusing on the voters who make up the local electorate. As I explain in my paper, I don