ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how local council members perceive the salience of several political issues at the local level. It looks at local council members' preferences for increased or reduced spending in each policy area. The dependent variables are the council members' spending preferences over the twenty-one important policy areas. Hypotheses on the impact of values on policy preferences have been stated—and investigated empirically—by several researchers. The chapter considers council members' party memberships, because party affiliation and left-right position are expected to have different impacts on several policy preferences. It includes a city variable as a global indicator of a local community's structure of needs and resources. The chapter also includes three more needs-resources indicators as explanatory variables: the perceived life conditions in the respective communities, the perceived financial situation, and the citizens' preferences. It considers a party's position in the local power structure, because nongoverning parties may be more apt to support high spending than governing parties.
