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Join PIPE Collaborative for a PIPE Workshop featuring speaker Tine Paulsen (USC POIR) and discussant  Isaac Hale (Occidental College). Lunch will be provided.

Tending the Grassroots: How Local institutions Impact National Elections

Could the type of political institution used at the local level impact the balance of power in national politics? If so, how? This paper argues that certain political institutions, like local partisan elections, empower local party branches, which in turn changes mobilization patterns in national elections. Furthermore, the type of party that is most likely to benefit from this dynamic are parties that use local branches and members as a central component of their electoral strategy. To test this intuition, I take advantage of a quasi-experimental local governance arrangement in early 20th century Sweden that made local institutions dependent on a population threshold. I find that municipalities that used elections and representatives for local governance, as opposed to a more traditional community meeting, had higher vote shares for the Social Democrats in national elections. Moreover, this is a pattern that is especially pronounced in areas with active party branches, while it disappears in areas without local activists. This result demonstrates that local-level political institutions can significantly impact national-level politics with consequences for institutional reform outcomes and citizen welfare.