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Taxation and Citizen Voice in School District Parcel Tax Elections

Isaac William Martin, Jennifer M. Nations

Sociological Science, October 29, 2018
10.15195/v5.a27


Local taxation produces consequential resource inequalities among public school districts, but little is known about how policy design affects taxpayers’ willingness to pay for schooling. We show that voters are more likely to approve local school taxes if the policy is written to require citizen–state consultation on how the funds are spent. In a sample of 236 California school district elections, the promise of indirect consultation with a citizen advisory board was associated with a 3.7 percentage-point greater share of voters and a probability of passage that was 31 percentage points greater, whereas direct consultation with voters was associated with a 5.7 percentage-point greater share of voters and a probability of passage that was 32 percentage points greater, relative to a proposed tax increase with no consultation. These results provide evidence that citizens may trade increased taxation for increased voice even within an established democracy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Isaac William Martin: Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego
E-mail: iwmartin@ucsd.edu

Jennifer M. Nations: Scholars Strategy Network
E-mail: jnations@ucsd.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation (award 201800030) and the National Science Foundation (award 1421993). The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Jane Lilly López and Lauren Olsen; the generosity of Rod Kiewiet, who shared documents from his own collection of school district parcel tax measures; and the constructive feedback of colleagues at the 2017 Meetings of the Sociology of Education Association.

  • Citation: Martin, Isaac W., and Jennifer M. Nations. 2018. “Taxation and Citizen Voice in School District Parcel Tax Elections.” Sociological Science 5: 653-668.
  • Received: August 2, 2018
  • Accepted: September 24, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a27


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