Abstract
Although there has been much research on the impact of racial composition of city populations on welfare and police spending, there has been little emphasis on the impact of racial composition of the city legislative governing bodies in relation to such spending. In essence, researchers have concentrated on the effects of city demographics that indirectly impact municipal spending rather than the composition of policy making bodies which directly decide the spending. Thus, the present study concentrates on the racial composition of municipal legislative governing bodies and its effect on city spending on public assistance and police. Using data from all 1,083 cities with a population of 25,000 and over in 1990, we find that cities with all white legislative governing bodies allocate smaller percentages of their spending on public assistance, and more on police in comparison to public assistance. When city population size is isolated, this effect is found in small cities, but not in large ones.
