Universalism and Allocative Decision Making in the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

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Abstract
This paper focuses on an allocative norm of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors whereby certain nonmandated federal funds are divided equally among the five supervisorial districts. This norm is relatively notorious in L.A. as the "rule of five," but it is not generally realized, even in county government circles, that the board has formally voted to adopt the divide by five approach. Universalism in L.A. County is not simply an informal or unwritten rule; it is policy. This provides a unique opportunity to study an important and widely observed legislative phenomenon in the making. We reconstruct the legislative history of two instances in which the board voted to adopt a divide by five rule, and offer a theoretical model to explain these votes. The model is game-theoretic, viewing the situation as essentially a zero-sum game of divide the dollar. The model also explicitly considers risk aversion. In both these regards it differs from Weingast's and Fiorina's models of universalism in Congress.

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