State and local governments affect your life on a daily basis—even if you don’t notice. They are the ones who provide basic services such snow removal and lawn care at parks. They determine the amount of money you pay in property taxes, set standards for early and secondary education, and make sure that there is a sewer for your toilet to flush into. Not all states are equal in terms of the amount of resources they have available, however. Economics, geography, sociodemographics, political history, and political culture all affect how states collect revenues and distribute benefits. In particular, political culture, or citizens’ beliefs about the appropriate role of government, has a direct impact on the organizational structure of states and localities. Such beliefs tend to vary significantly within and between states, though. To systematically explain such variance between states and localities, Chapter 1 introduces the comparative method.

Citizens increasingly trust state and local governments (more so than the federal government) to design and administer public policy programs, and, with an exception during the recession of the late 2000s, the federal government has been granting states more discretionary power through the process of devolution. As such, states have more authority over the level of policy experimentation and policy innovation in which they participate, leading some to refer to the states as “laboratories of democracy.” However, other factors, including the level of organized interest group activity and the rules and composition of the legislature, affect the actual level of policy innovation within a state. To appropriately study such variation requires a methodological tool capable of systematically examining differences between and among similar units. Again, the comparative method provides a useful analytical tool for explaining such differences.