LIBSPOSSOC 245: City and Citizenship 03312004

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Course Agenda Today.
• Readings/Lecture.
• Urban Political Economy.
• Globalization and 21st Urban Economies.
• CNN Video Collapse of Globalization (4min).
• Progressivism, urban reform, and urban economies
  - community power in late 19th early 20th
  century.
• Video Chicagos Union Stockyard (20min).
• Community Power and Leadership.
• Structure of Power.
• Urban restructuring. Regimes vs. Machines.
• Functional Fiefdoms.
• Mayoral leadership.
• Decentralization, Political/Social Movements and
  Responsiveness.
• Presentations.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Models of Power.
• Why does it matter.
• Elitist vs. pluralist models of power.
• Elitist model of power.
• One elite?
• How do you know elites when you see them?
• Hunter Community Power Structure (1953).
• Method.
• Perceived vs. actual power.
• Stratification theory.
• Economic power trumps political power.
• Measures reputation and perception not the
  reality of power.
• Unique to Atlanta?

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Pluralist.
• Decision making rather than reputational
  approach.
• Dahls work.
• Discovers multiple elites w/o necessarily
  overlapping domain of power and influence.
• Separate and distinct networks of elites.
• Identified key role of executive centered
  coalitions.
• What entities comprised the coalition?
• Why pluralist?
• Negotiating of power between more or less equal
  entities or groups.
• Pluralism also criticized.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Hunter and Dahls work lay down theoretical
  foundations for subsequent work.
• Political Science and Sociology different
  approaches and concerns.
• Comparative studies.
• Meta-analysis.
• Agreement between the two approaches.
• Role of business.
• Not necessarily a unified class block.
• Exception, one industry towns.
• Steel towns (Gary, IN Pittsburgh, PA). Mining
  towns (Anaconda and Butte, MT).
• Competing networks of business elites.
• Merchants and developers.
• Manufacturing corporations.
• Tensions between elites whose power is mobile vs.
  fixed in cities.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Agreement between the two approaches (continued).
• Importance of non-decisions.
• Importance of invisible decisions.
• Heresthetics (William Riker).
• Power lies in the shaping of the field of
  decision making as much as the ability to decide.
• Agenda setting.
• How to determine the limits of debate?
• Excluded communities must mobilize or stay
  invisible.
• Example
• Dahl ignored African-American community in New
  Haven, CT.
• African-Americans did not participate in
  decisions or issues addressed.
• Shows critical role for political/social movement
  mobilization to reverse exclusion by omission.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Agreement between the two approaches (continued).
• Variety of structures of power relations.
• Temporal variation as well.
• Stratified power structures.
• One industry towns.
• Isolated small communities.
• South.
• Pluralist power structures.
• Metropolitan areas.
• Heterogeneous populations.
• Diverse economic base.
• Diverse urban demography and culture.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Community Power.
• Effected by the age of restructuring.
• What is age of restructuring?
• Why did it impact understandings of community
  power?
• Questions raised by age of restructuring.
• Why did certain business elites collaborate with
  disinvestment?
• Why did redevelopment projects come out of city
  government?
• Why large central city underclass left out of
  electoral and other political dynamics (critique
  of pluralism).
• Why little neighborhood directed payoffs?
• Questions identify limits of stratification and
  pluralist theories.
• Change in theories also related to broader
  political change associated with age of
  restructuring.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Global Capital and neo-Marxism.
• Rapid growth of highly mobile global capital and
  manufacturing.
• Related to changes at national level in United
  States, England, and other states in response to
  crises triggering age of restructuring.
• Cities foundational moment determines subsequent
  trajectory of development.
• Industrial cities (especially Northeast and Great
  Lakes area) tied to mode of production that
  becomes outdated.
• Highly competitive capitalist market w/n United
  States and globally produces race to the bottom.
• Neo-Marxist view.
• Dynamics of class struggle predominant.
• Structure urban politics.
• Analytic framework cuts across levels of analysis.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Growth Machine Theory.
• Builds on contribution of neo-Marxism to examine
  wider context of urban development.
• Molotch and the growth machine.
• Identification of different elites networks.
• Community policy making dominated by coalition of
  interests.
• Land Holding elites.
• Bankers, developers, construction, architect,
  engineers.
• Growth increases property value.
• Growth may be short term or long term - coalition
  verges on speculation.
• Growth machine distinct from neo-Marxism.
• Maximization of rental returns not necessarily
  profit.
• Locally based elite.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Growth Machine and role of city government.
• Support for growth machine coalition premised on
  the production of jobs through growth.
• Intermediary role between the growth coalition
  sponsored redevelopment projects and community
  resistance or concern.
• Jobs an ideological prop, promised but never
  delivered.
• Anti-growth coalitions sometimes effective.
• Alliance between neighborhood groups and
  environmental groups.
• Difficult to defeat a highly adaptive and well
  funded growth machines.
• Growth machines can move decision making to other
  high jurisdictions, greater amount of resources
  for law suits, etc.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Cities as unitary interest.
• Contrasts dramatically with the growth machine
  and neo-Marxist approaches.
• Mutual recognition of interest among diverse
  coalition of actors.
• Normative implications.
• How to determine mutual interest?
• Mutual interest as ideological cloak.
• Powerful determine interest.
• No guarantee that development projects will
  benefit all mutually.
• Various arguments about interests.
• Services first.
• Attracting business first.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Regime theory.
• Informal arrangements.
• Public and private interests.
• Management (not resolution) of conflict.
• Adapting city government, private entities, and
  civil society to social change.
• Mayor-centric.
• Power of eminent domain.
• Elite identification.
• Mayor identifies with other elites.
• Systemic power tying together political and
  corporate elites.
• Regime types.
• Entrepreneurial/corporate.
• Progressive.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Community power Summary.
• High variability in city power structures.
• Different degrees of centralization, economic and
  cultural homogeneity.
• Poletown Detroit as example of complexity of
  applying theories to actual cases.
• Deterministic? Neo-Marxism, growth machine,
  unitary interests.
• Convergence of theories.
• Public and private entities play equally
  important role (at least must both be included in
  theories).
• Local political structures are dynamic.
• Macrostructures shape field of decision making,
  but local leaders still critical.
• Elites are relatively small component of the
  population, especially critical decision makers.
• Diversity of institutional bases of elite power.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Functional Fiefdoms.
• Specialization of government.
• Fragmentation of power among different
  bureaucracies.
• Islands of Power of functional feudalities.
• New political machines.
• Bureaucratic power not political parties.
• Interstate Highway System as example of fiefdoms.
• Development not controlled by local political
  structures but rather state highway departments
  shielded from political inputs.
• Consequences
• Many urban communities disrupted by freeway
  projects.
• Destruction of mass transit systems.
• Effects on city government.
• Inhibited unified political leadership.
• City governments being strengthened to overcome
  power of functional fiefdoms (homerule)

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Mayoral Power vis-à-vis fiefdom.
• Determinants of mayoral power (capacity).
• Resources.
• City Jurisdiction of education, housing, etc.
• Mayoral jurisdiction in critical policy areas.
• Full time mayor.
• Large support staff.
• Publicity opportunities and skill.
• Actors which can be mobilized to support mayors.
• Styles of leadership.
• Ceremonial.
• Caretaker.
• Crusader.
• Strong/Program entrepreneur.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Strengthening of mayors.
• In response to crises of late 1960s and 1970s
  realization strong mayors critical.
• Dimensions of strength.
• Growth in staff.
• Dynamic individual can overcome institutional
  constraints.
• Examples Koch, Wilson.
• Mayor again respected position.
• Achievement of national office or prominence.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Nonresponsiveness.
• Avenues for forcing city governments and elite
  networks to address citizens needs.
• Newark Community Union Project.
• Parenti (neo-Marxist).
• Urban political process from below
• Rulers and ruled.
• Capacity to set agenda.
• No latent power, power only exists from
  mobilization.
• Demands must be placed on system, not responsive
  to needs.
• Poor lack resources.
• Demonstrations.
• Rent strikes.
• Strikes.
• Squatting.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Decentralization.
• Community Action Programs/Model Cities.
• Developed by federal state esp. Great Society.
• CAAs gradually have federal funding cut, then
  eliminated,
• Captured by local governments.
• Community control.
• Planning inputs decentralized.
• Decision making not decentralized.
• Public Education decentralized.
• Collapse of integration as solution to
  educational inequality.
• Reform attempted in New York and Detroit,
  especially in financially strapped
  African-American school districts.
• Locally elected governing boards.
• Failure - decentralization survives in form of
  community input.
• Little city halls.

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LIBS/POS/SOC 245 City and Citizenship03/31/2004

• Decentralization (continued).
• Neighborhood Advisory Councils.
• Experiment not entirely successful complaint
  about elected and or/appointed.
• 1990s and 2000s Decentralization.
• Neighborhood level input/governance critical.
• Revitalization and community control.
• Control sharing mechanisms have reduced
  alienation at times.
• Rebirth of urban democracy?
• Citizens must be given real not symbolic power.
• City officials must encourage participation.
• Participation should be citywide.
• Bias.
• Antidotes decentralization and strong
  leadership?