Are local governments worse for liberty?

Rethinking the libertarian preference for local government

I saw this Milton Friedman quote on Twitter this week:

“Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power,, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage, disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.”

This sentiment in favor of state and local government over federal government is pervasive throughout libertarian and classical liberal circles. Its more refined form, typically in the analysis of polycentricity, is still often used to justify handing power down to state and local governments. From a libertarian perspective, it makes sense that state and local governments would theoretically be better regulators and planners. State and local governments might not face the same “knowledge problems” that F.A. Hayek famously laid out. 

However, if there is reason to believe that state and local governments are more likely to reduce individual liberty than the federal government, liberty-oriented individuals may have to update their priors. Furthermore, if “exit” is harder than Friedman implies in the quote above, how should we reimagine the relationship between the state and individual liberty?

Which is worse - local or federal government?

In terms of which level of government regularly restricts individual liberty and is most subject to public choice concerns, arguably local politics is worse. This is not to say that the federal government is not also subject to similar problems; however, the simple big-ness of the federal government makes it harder for private interests to “capture” public decision-making. Instead, federal policy is often subject to a much wider range of interest group pressures, making it more difficult for any single interest to take consistent hold in most cases. Furthermore, public comment is very indirect in federal politics. Public comment periods exist for certain administrative policies; however, these public comment periods appear to have less sway over final decision-making. This is very different from local politics where one really passionate group can easily put pressure on local politicians to vote in their favor. 

When you think about it along those lines, recognizing the violations of liberty that happen on the local level makes a lot more sense. Passionate groups of activists or private interests can send a few dozen emails or phone calls to their local government officials and easily overwhelm their team. A few dozen, or even several thousand, letters, phone calls, and emails will mean almost nothing to the average federal decision-maker. 

Zoning, traffic tickets, and more

Land use regulations

The institutional factors aside, the types of incursions on liberty that occur seem to be more intimate and invasive at the local level in many ways. My own personal pet topic - land-use regulations - is a great example of this. Unlike regulations on car manufacturing, carbon emissions, etc. from the federal level, which tend to be directed towards corporate entities, the local government’s zoning laws tell you explicitly what you can and cannot do with your own property. Much has been written about this issue, including by me, but the fundamental question of property rights is often subordinate in the discourse. 

This reduction in property rights is not only a concern in what you can do with your property, but it also has implications for social and cultural concerns. In Willow Lung-Amam’s academic article, That “Monster House” is My Home: The Social and Cultural Politics of Design Reviews and Regulations, Lung-Amam describes how local political bodies are used by local elites to police family forms. In this case, wealthy California suburbanites oppose the ability of immigrant families to build on their property to accommodate extended relatives. Local zoning regulations often prohibit building an additional full kitchen in a single-family home, making multigenerational living much harder for families seeking that option. Single-family zoning has also historically been used to regulate the “types” of people who can live in high-opportunity neighborhoods along socioeconomic and sexuality lines. 

Policing

A topic of recent importance, and even one many libertarians recognize is a major issue, is policing. Police can obviously be sources of loss of liberty. By definition, they play out the state’s monopoly on violence on a day-to-day basis. They are also, notably, not agents of the federal government. Their budgets are determined at the local level and they are typically employed at the local level, state troopers aside. They are a prime example of how states and localities can often be far more illiberal in reality. Not only do they enact the state’s monopoly on violence, but they also do so in ways that cause direct, intimate harm to individuals. 

I won’t write much on this topic, as I don’t feel qualified to do so and many others have written much better pieces on this issue, but I will point out several examples. Ticketing bicyclists, disproportionately Black and Brown people. Stealing and even selling an individual’s property. Violence against sex workers, drug users, and disabled people. And much more that has been extensively covered elsewhere. Point being, police represent a tension in the idea that state and local government powers are necessarily “better” and put into question Friedman’s belief that people have easy “exit” from these situations, as state and local governments do hold the power to arrest and detain individuals. 

Racial Discrimination

It is strange that this discourse often overlooks (or ignores) the role state and local governments have played, and continue to play, in racial discrimination. School desegregation, voting rights, equal employment, and many civil rights cases were won by federal government overruling local decisions. Local and state governments continue these same patterns through residential segregation and infrastructure inequalities like municipal underbounding, where local governments prevent annexation extension of services to Black, semi-urban communities. 

While some libertarians disagree with these policies; frankly, they’re disastrously wrong and mistaken. The history of racial discrimination immediately throws a wrench in the idea of “exit”. For certain classes of people, leaving is either not realistically an option (and not just because it’s impractical, as Friedman implies) or will not create meaningful difference. For example, in the case of municipal underbounding, the key factor in service extension is race. Black families have no meaningful way out of that discrimination as it will likely follow them wherever Black people happen to be. 

Where do we go from here?

Liberty-minded individuals (in the broadest sense possible) should reimagine the concept of liberty away from the size of the institution/government to the intimacy with which they violate one’s liberties. This, of course, does not mean the federal government cannot create intimate forms of harm, but that “big government” is a weak argument against government policy. Illiberal policies are not better if made at the state or local level, and could potentially be worse. This doesn’t mean we cannot allow state and localities to be the “laboratories of democracy”, which has proven to be a useful tool in examining policy effectiveness, but instead that we should be skeptical that the scale of government necessarily makes their harms any less dangerous. 

Those who care about liberty should also reimagine the role of the federal government. Traditional libertarian thought typically states the primary role of government is to outline clear property rights and protect individual liberties. This is not wrong; however, “individual liberties” has historically been used to justify small-scale illiberalism, which is in tension with the actual realization of individual liberty. Federal government can play a key role in the oversight of state and local governments to prevent incursions on individual liberty. This does not even require one to accept the realization of “equality of opportunity” as a government role. Instead, it is simply accepting that state and local governments may be just as illiberal as the federal government and a similar system of “checks and balances” should be employed. 

In practice, this means rejecting the rhetoric that federal legislation eliminating exclusionary zoning, racial discrimination, and/or police malpractice are “big government tyranny”. It may also mean, to the discomfort of many libertarians, that the best level of decision-making may be at the federal level. In the case of issues like zoning and infrastructure, if not the federal level, at least the state level. The ability of these governments to not only coordinate, but also ensure that local elites do not capture the decision-making processes, can potentially allow individual liberty to flourish.