Tabling Debate: How Local Officials Try to Use Agenda Control to Stifle Conflict
2025-11-12
Public officials influence policymaking by deciding which items receive attention and action—and which do not. Accounts from national legislatures typically explain agenda control in terms of party leadership and discipline. But, do politicians try to exert agenda control outside highly professionalized legislatures? We bring the agenda control discussion to US school boards, which lack strong party control and feature few restrictions on agendas. We argue that local officials will increase their use of procedural rules to try to avoid making decisions in conflictual settings. We test our argument by constructing measures of both agenda control and conflict in a dataset of nearly 65,000 school board meeting transcripts. Consistent with our theory, we document an increased use of procedural control in highly contentious meetings. Responses from these school board members to a novel survey experiment confirm the causal link: they increase their use of tabling when conflict occurs on an issue.