The New Politics of Land Use

土地使用政治主导着现代美国地方政府。学术界认为，传统的财产分区过程培养了一个由开发商、企业和民选代表组成的"增长机器"联盟。近年来，公民、环保主义者和其他利益集团越来越多地转向直接民主制度，特别是选民倡议，以对抗亲增长的利益。倡议是由公民直接提出和决定的法律或法令。它们是传统分区做法的制度性替代办法，旨在改变社区土地使用决定的政治权力平衡。考虑到土地使用问题在美国地方政府日常事务中的普遍性，以及他们的决策在经济上的重要性，政治学家对土地使用的政治关注很少。我们对参与土地使用过程的人所作的制度选择的后果知之甚少。本研究通过构建和分析几个关于当地土地利用举措动态及其对发展政策影响的新数据集，推进了我们对土地利用新政治的理解。 土地使用政治学也提供了一个有价值的透镜，通过它可以更好地理解其他一些重要的政治学问题。土地使用政治的核心是社区利益的冲突（例如，土地所有者、社区组织、现有居民、民选代表）有权决定如何使用私有财产。了解这些不同的利益如何相互作用，政治制度的影响，如投票倡议对他们的互动和影响，以及社区对土地使用和财产权的最终决定是本研究的关键动机。第一个组成部分是研究最近土地使用倡议的政治动态。该方法首先构建了一个全面的清单，自1990年以来，在中型和大型美国城市的土地利用举措。从这个列表中，最近的倡议的样本进行了分析，以测试假设什么类型的团体可以使用的倡议，以促进他们的政治利益，以及什么因素导致他们的成功。该研究还涉及几个案例研究，以进一步探讨私人利益集团谈判公共土地使用政策的过程的轮廓。总之，这些分析将允许扩展和完善现有的理论的利益集团的影响。第二部分考虑政治体制对土地使用政策和结果的影响。这一部分以土地利用政策形成的两阶段模式为基础，首先估计导致提议者采用土地利用举措的因素，其次估计这些举措的政策后果。这些分析比较了两组社区的土地使用政策和结果：那些可能主要通过传统的分区条例来规范财产使用的社区，以及那些可能使用倡议的社区。这两个阶段的分析评估了政策是否不同时，他们是在每一个制度，有条件的社区使用的倡议进程，以及这些差异的代表性后果（即，他们喜欢什么样的兴趣）。这两个组成部分共同提供了一个更清晰的理解，利益集团何时以及如何影响公共政策的结果，以及政治机构的代表性后果，如选民的倡议，在土地使用政策的重要领域。 该数据集将对其他对这一重要主题感兴趣的人具有重要价值。

Land use politics dominates modern American local governments. Scholarship suggests that the traditional process of zoning property cultivates a "growth machine" coalition of developers, businesses, and elected representatives. In recent years, citizens, environmentalists, and other interests have increasingly turned to the institutions of direct democracy, especially voter initiatives, to counter pro-growth interests. Initiatives are laws or ordinances that are proposed and decided directly by citizens. They are institutional alternatives to traditional zoning practices, and are intended to shift the balance of political power over a community's land use decisions. Given the prevalence of land use issues in the day-to-day business of American local governments, and the economic importance of their decisions, political scientists have paid surprisingly little attention to the politics of land use. We know very little about the consequences of the institutional choices made by participants in the land use process. This research advances our understanding of the new politics of land use by constructing and analyzing several new datasets on the dynamics of local land use initiatives and their consequences for development policy. Land use politics also provides a valuable lens through which to better understand a number of other important political science problems. At the heart of land use politics is a conflict over what interests in a community (e.g., landowners, community organizations, current residents, elected representatives) have the right to make decisions about the usage of private property. Understanding how these various interests interact, the effects of political institutions such as ballot initiatives on their interactions and influence, and the ultimate decisions communities make about land use and property rights are key motivations for this study.The research has two major components. The first component is a study of the political dynamics of recent land use initiatives. The methodology involves first constructing a comprehensive list of land use initiatives in medium and large sized US cities since 1990. From this list, a sample of recent initiatives are analyzed to test hypotheses about what types of groups can use initiatives to promote their political interests, and what factors lead to their success. The research also involves several case studies to further explore the contours of the process by which private interest groups negotiate public land use policy. Together, these analyses will allow for the extension and refinement of existing theories of interest group influence. The second component considers the consequences of political institutions on land use policies and outcomes. Building upon a two-stage model of land use policy formation, this component estimates, first, the factors that lead proponents to use land use initiatives, and second, the policy consequences of those initiatives. The analyses compares land use policy and outcomes on a number of dimensions in two sets of communities: those that are likely to regulate property usage primarily through traditional zoning ordinances, and those that are likely to use initiatives. This two-stage analysis assesses both whether policies differ when they are made under each institutional regime, conditional upon a community using the initiative process, and the representational consequences of these differences (i.e., what types of interests do they favor). Together, these two components provide a clearer understanding of when and how interest groups influence public policy outcomes, and the representational consequences of political institutions such as voter initiatives, in the important area of land use policy. This dataset will be of significant value to others interested in this important topic.