Institutional reforms to districted city councils from at-large systems are typically motivated by the desire to increase geographic and descriptive representation, enriching representation for historically excluded groups. The policy impact of descriptive representation, however, have been found to be conditional and not definitive. In this article, I explore whether institutional reform from at-large to districts has effects on a city council's policy agenda, or whether institutional constraints can quell the reform's impacts. I look to the “10-1” reform in Austin, Texas, implemented in 2015, using an original dataset collected from items in the council's 2009–2019 meeting minutes for a direct measure of the agenda. After coding each item for policy substance and testing the agenda's diversity, I find that the reform had short-term effects on the policy agenda. Instead, local government's agenda is largely driven by external problems and pragmatic needs facing the city. Consequently, the effects of reform are overwhelmed by institutional stickiness.

从一般系统对区议会进行机构改革的动机通常是希望增加地理和描述性代表性，丰富历史上被排斥群体的代表性。然而，描述性表述的政策影响已被发现是有条件的，而不是确定性的。在本文中，我探讨了从一般人到地区的制度改革是否对市议会的政策议程产生影响，或者制度约束是否可以平息改革的影响。我期待着 2015 年在德克萨斯州奥斯汀实施的“10-1”改革，使用从理事会 2009-2019 年会议记录中的项目收集的原始数据集来直接衡量议程。在为政策实质编码每个项目并测试议程的多样性后，我发现改革对政策议程产生了短期影响。相反，地方政府的议程主要是由城市面临的外部问题和务实需求驱动的。因此，改革的效果被制度粘性压倒了。