Local Legislative Professionalism

Although research on professionalism in state legislatures has been substantial, professionalism research has ignored legislative bodies in local government, such as city councils and school boards. Using detailed school district-level data and an original survey of school board members in 210 school districts in California, we develop measures of professionalism in the local government context. We then use these measures to examine which characteristics of school districts are associated with greater professionalization. Consistent with findings in the state politics literature, we find that districts with greater resources and more heterogeneous environments exhibit higher degrees of professionalism than other districts.