Exploring Home Rule Authority: An Assessment of the Impetuses Behind Broad Grants of Local Power

Abstract

This study is a comparative examination of factors related to a state’s likelihood of granting its local governments broad home rule authority or broad local governing discretion. Six factors are assessed: percentage of a state’s residents living in urban areas, state’s heterogeneity, per capita income, region, age of state, and dominant political culture. Binary, logistic regression analysis is used to determine logistic odds of a state’s granting structural and broad functional home rule authority given the posited factors. Results showed no significant relationships between variables.