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Some scholars argue that party leader considerations drive governors copartisan with presidents toward fiscal discipline, while others argue that party reputation concerns guide their behavior. To demonstrate how to assess whether either of these mechanisms is at work, I extend this analysis to the municipal level. If mayors aligned with both governors and presidents are more disciplined than mayors aligned with presidents only, copartisan governors affect mayoral fiscal behavior through party leader considerations. If mayors aligned with both governors and presidents are just as fiscally disciplined as those aligned with presidents only, party reputation concerns drive mayoral fiscal behavior. Cross-sectional time-series analysis of debt used to finance fiscal excess in municipal Mexico reveals support for the party-leader-concern logic in this nation, but the party reputation logic (or both logics or neither logic) may be at work in others.
Allyson Lucinda Benton (Wed,) studied this question.