General Interest Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Civil Rights Enforcement Charles S. Bullock, III 1 , Eric M. Wilk 2 and Charles M. Lamb 3 Abstract This article compares federal, state, and local civil rights agencies’ effectiveness in enforcing the Fair Housing Act. Two factors primarily define effective enforcement: whether agencies’ conciliation efforts are more likely to lead to agreements between the parties involved in complaints and whether agencies are more likely to provide remedies to complainants in cases in which there is cause to believe discrimination occurred. The analysis shows that state and local agencies are generally more effective than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) both at conciliating complaints and at providing remedies. HUD does appear to be more effective than state and local agencies in terms of the dollar amount of monetary relief awarded when successful conciliations occur, but HUD’s remedial effectiveness disappears after controlling for the likelihood of successful conciliations. Keywords federalism, bureaucratic effectiveness, fair housing, HUD Discrimination and segregation have long char- acterized the American housing market. In recent years, although the most flagrant forms of discrimination have decreased, substantial levels have continued in housing rentals and sales (Turner et al. 2002; Turner et al. 2013). In addition, residential segregation persists despite declines since the 1980s (e.g., Lichter, Parisi, and Taquino 2015; Logan and Stults 2011; Massey and Tannen 2015). Because these problems continue, scholars have recom- mended improvements in fair housing enforce- ment (Lamb 2005; Massey and Denton 1993; Oliver 2010). One important improvement would be to increase the effectiveness with which civil rights agencies at all levels of gov- ernment resolve housing discrimination com- plaints and provide remedies for victims of discrimination. Scholars have explored numerous aspects of governmental effectiveness (e.g., Carpenter 2001; Scholz 1991; Scholz and Wei 1986; Wil- son 2000), even though defining and measuring the concept has posed problems (Cameron and Whetten 1983; Lee and Whitford 2009). Con- ceptions of effectiveness often emphasize the 1 Department of Political Science, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA 2 Department of Social Science, Perimeter College of Georgia State University, Alpharetta, GA, USA 3 Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA Corresponding Author: Charles S. Bullock III, Department of Political Science, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. Email: csbullock57@hotmail.com State and Local Government Review 2017, Vol. 49(2) 87-104 ª The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17730107 journals.sagepub.com/home/slg