Elaine B. Sharp

Understanding Local Adoption and Implementation of Climate Change Mitigation Policy

Increasingly, local governments are crafting policy to tackle climate change. This article examines why cities develop and implement climate change programs. The authors consider the impact of interest group pressure, political institutions, and problem severity on a city’s decision to develop and implement climate protection programs. Their results suggest that organized interests influence both adoption and implementation of climate mitigation programs. This effect, however, is contingent on political institutions. In general, organized interests are more effective in mayoral as opposed to city manager forms of governments. Interestingly, while financially strapped cities may adopt climate mitigation programs to advance cobenefits or cost savings, fiscal stress also impedes program implementation.

Toward a New Understanding of Urban Services and Citizen Participation: The Coproduction Concept:

an alternative, &dquo;coproduction&dquo; model. Based upon the concept of coproduction as developed by Whitaker, Rich and others,’ the alternative suggested here would emphasize the conjoint responsibility of lay citizens and professional government agents for the delivery of public services. This coproduction model expands the citizen role from one of consuming and passing judgment upon public services to one that also involves responsibility for creation of public services. It expands the public official’s role from

Citizen-Initiated Contacting of Government Officials and Socioeconomic Status: Determining the Relationship and Accounting for It

The topic of citizen-initiated contacting of government officials has received increasing attention, but research has yielded conflicting findings on the relationship of socioeconomic status to contacting behavior. Various studies find that the two are negatively, positively, parabolically, or negligibly related. Data are presented supporting the claim of a positive relationship, and reasons for the conflicting findings are explored. The need-awareness model, associated with the finding of a parabolic relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting at the aggregate level, is tested at the individual level of analysis. While the importance of the need and awareness factors is affirmed, the overall model is not supported. As with other modes of political participation, sense of efficacy is found to be an important predictor of contracting, but the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting remains when efficacy is controlled.

The Politics of Economic Development Policy

Based on data from a national sample survey of cities, this article shows that there is considerable variation in the extent to which mechanisms for citizen involvement are in place for economic development decision making. More important, the analysis shows that, for cities that are suffering from property tax stress, there are interesting and significant implications of citizen involvement in the economic development process. Where tax stress is high, higher levels of citizen involvement are associated with greater use of development tools such as loan guarantees that minimize apparent tax costs, as well as development activities that provide credit-claiming opportunities for politicians. However, greater citizen involvement diminishes the likelihood that the city will use tax abatement.

Accounting for Variation in Distrust of Local Police

This paper tests a variety of explanations for variation in distrust of local police in the US. As with other attitudes toward the police, there is a substantial race gap in distrust of the police. Our analysis is based upon citizen survey data from 33 cities and data on policing characteristics and the city context for those same cities. It reveals that individual‐level factors representative of a psychological model are of substantial importance in accounting for variation in distrust of the police. City‐level attributes tapping differences in police performance are also important predictors of citizen distrust of the police, even once individual‐level attributes are controlled; and there are important racial differences in the impact of these police performance variables as well, resulting in a largely full accounting of the initial race gap.

The Politics and Economics of the New City Debt

his paper contrasts nonguaranteed city debt with taxation and general obligation debt. Drawing upon Bureau of the Census, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) and Municipal Year Book data, the analysis shows that both per capita tax revenue and outstanding general obligation debt are best explained by background factors such as total population, functional scope, and region, while fiscal strain plays a secondary role. Political structures, in the shape of legal constraints on taxation and debt and of form of government, do not account for patterns of these traditional revenue sources. By contrast, nonguaranteed debt is best explained by a model in which fiscal strain has a paramount role, but with both legal constraints on taxing and regional differentiation contributing significantly to the explanation, at least for data collected prior to 1978. The findings suggest a two-tiered model of the revenue side of fiscal decision making, with historical accommodations to powerful economic and demographic factors dominating taxing and general obligation debt, while nonguaranteed debt serves as a flexible instrument of shorter-term strategy.

Citizen Organizations in Policing Issues and Crime Prevention: Incentives for Participation

its Task Force on Community Crime Prevention summarizes a growing view that direct citizen involvement is necessary and that public agencies cannot solve the problems of crime alone. The concensus of the Commission and the Task Force is that if this country is to reduce crime, there must be a willingness on the part of every citizen to give of himself, his time, his energy, and his imagination...unless a worried citizenry can translate its indignation into active participation in the search for and implementation of

Revitalizing Urban Research Can Cultural Explanation Bring Us Back from the Periphery

This article lays out an argument that if the urban politics field has become marginalized, it is because the field has neglected to develop a contemporary, theoretically grounded version of cultural explanation to go along with its attention to institutions and political economy. The article introduces such a theoretical framework. It then shows how taking cultural explanation seriously could bring the study of urban politics closer to themes that are energizing the American and comparative politics fields. The article concludes with an acknowledgment of a remaining challenge—conceptualizing how race and ethnicity relate to the new conceptualization of unconventional versus traditional subcultures in the United States

The Dynamics of Issue Expansion: Cases from Disability Rights and Fetal Research Controversy

This article draws upon cases from the history of disability rights policy-making and from the history of fetal research regulation to explore the role of public opinion in policy-making. Drawing upon Wilsons typology, hypotheses set forth expectations that (a) in episodes of majoritarian politics, policymakers respond to popular concern about an issue; (b) in episodes of entrepreneurial politics, policy-makers mobilize popular concern; (c) in episodes of client politics, policymakers act in the absence of popular concern; and (d) in episodes of interest group politics, mobilization of popular concern is contingent upon the prevailing division of public opinion on the issue. The results generally support the thesis that the role of public opinion is a function of the costs, benefits, and organization of interests surrounding policy issues.

Cities and Subcultures Exploring Validity and Predicting Connections

Recently there has been renewed attention to the concept of culture in analyses of urban politics. That resurgence has taken a different path from the religion-, race-, and ethnicity-dominated approach of classic formulations. Instead, a variety of scholars conceptualize and measure subculture based on trends at the heart of a postindustrial, cultural divide in the United States. Focusing on change in women’s social roles, greater prevalence of postsecondary education, increases in nontraditional household arrangements, the decline in traditional religious attachments, and the growing importance of “creative-class” occupations, writers have identified an emergent “unconventional” or “new political culture” that can be differentiated from a traditional or conventional subculture. This article presents a measurement validation study of this new approach that also shows the substantial correspondence between Census Bureau–based and survey-based measures of this new conceptualization.