Marion Orr

Urban Regimes and Leadership in Detroit

The concept of urban regime has emerged as a widely used instrument to explore the responses of local leaders to processes of change. This study of regime building in Detroit during the long period of Coleman Youngs mayoralty, contrary to some previous studies, shows how problems of cooperation between private and public leaders have been only partially overcome in Detroit. The key contribution of regime theory is its focus on the problems of collective organization and action. In Detroit, an effective public-private partnership has not emerged, and the authors examine the consequences. They conclude by examining the neglected issue of regime succession and by presenting a formal schema of the process of regime transition.

Urban Politics, Governing Nonprofits, and Community Revitalization

Drawing on work by Schattschneider (1960) and Baumgartner and Jones (1993) and examining governing nonprofits in three U.S. cities, the authors assert that governing nonprofits can provide a platform for restructuring political agendas. They take on roles and responsibilities traditionally reserved for the government, and they forge coalitions among and across groups, organizations, and sectors to address societal problems. These organizations require broad community support, embrace flexible policy agendas, and operate in the public domain. The success of governing nonprofits also lies in their ability to foster positive linkages with the local leadership without becoming completely identified with local authorities.

MANAGING CITIZEN FEARS Public Attitudes toward Urban Terrorism

The authors examine public attitudes toward urban terrorism, focusing on whether emotion or reason is a more important determinant of how people feel. Using the results of a public opinion survey in a large, northeastern city, the authors find that both emotion and reason affect people’s reactions to terrorist attacks. However, this relationship is affected by personal conversation. The more people talk about terrorism, the greater the chance reason rather than fear will dictate reactions. These results have important ramifications for how urban officials deal with homeland security and assuage citizens whose excessive concerns about terrorism have led to costly security expenditures.

CITIZEN EVALUATIONS OF LOCAL POLICE Personal Experience or Symbolic Attitudes

The sources of public assessments of government policy long have been the object of controversy between those proposing personal experience versus a symbolic attitudes model based on more general political and social beliefs. However, much of the research focuses on national policy issues that are not concrete and are removed from the daily experiences of many Americans. The authors use attitudes about local police to examine whether public assessments are linked more to people’s direct experience with crime and the police or whether such impressions are associated with more abstract attitudes about politics and law enforcement. They find that personal experience mattered more than symbolic attitudes when it came to views about police courtesy and fairness. However, both personal experience and symbolic attitudes were important in regard to opinions about crime seriousness and assessments of overall police performance. These results have important implications for how citizens evaluate local government services.

Citizens’ Views on Urban Revitalization The Case of Providence, Rhode Island

Renaissance cities have been widely discussed in the literature on urban development. However, despite scholarly interest in this subject, there has been little systematic research on how citizens feel about so-called “hot” cities and the factors that go into citizen conclusions that a city is doing well. In this paper, we use data from a survey of residents of Providence, Rhode Island and review the political and economic history of the area to assess what affects public opinion about city success, quality of life, and downtown improvement. Our analysis demonstrates that on dimensions such as moving in the right direction, satisfaction with specific services such as police protection is important to public assessments. In other areas, though, such as quality of life, factors such as race relations, street repairs, and political leadership matter more. We conclude with suggestions about what cities that wish to be seen as having “turned the corner” must do in order to bring citizens around to that viewpoint.

The Flight of the Bumblebee: Why Reform Is Difficult but Not Impossible

Positing behavior as interest driven insufficiently explains why reform is difficult. This article draws on experiences with school reform to argue that ideas in the form of purposes play a part. Purposes, however, are erratic sources of motivation, sometimes generating intense commitments but often functioning in a mercurial manner. They operate in conjunction with the character and strength of supports. Purposes that are compatible in principle may nevertheless compete for time, resources, and especially attention. Because human beings are creatures of bounded rationality, any given purpose is susceptible to attention shift. Interpersonal and interorganizational networks can serve as counterweights by bolstering identity with the reform goal, providing cognitive reinforcement for it, and enhancing the credibility of a reform goal as achievable. In an assessment of the role of ideas, it is important to remember that they come in a variety of scopes and levels of abstractness. As forces in the politics of reform, ideas have a part shaped by context. The role of ideas in the local setting is quite different from their role in media-infused battles at the national level. Local arenas are frequently nonpartisan, with actors focused on immediate concerns, daily demands, and scarce resources. Because concrete actions may be more important than ideological posture, mass persuasion may be of less concern than enlistment of scattered cadres of task-specific activists.Clarence Stone is Research Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at George Washington and Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland (cstone@gvpt.umd.edu). Marion Orr is Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies, Brown University (Marion_Orr@brown.edu). Donn Worgs is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of Metropolitan Studies, Towson University (dworgs@ towson.edu). The authors wish to thank three anonymous reviewers for extraordinarily helpful comments.

Political Science and Education Research: An Exploratory Look at Two Political Science Journals

A systematic and longitudinal analysis of all of the education-related articles published in two of political sciences oldest journals reveals that political science has aided our knowledge of education by focusing on the distribution of power in the decision-making process, the organization and governance of public school systems, and the outcomes and effects of education policy decisions. Moreover, the present data suggest that only a tiny fraction of the major articles published in traditional political science journals have focused on education and that those political scientists conducting education research turn to multidisciplinary education journals as outlets for their scholarship.

Urban regimes and school compacts: The development of the Detroit Compact

School compacts between the business community and school officials have increased in recent years. This paper examines the development and implementation of a school compact program in the Detroit Public School system. The paper shows that the Detroit Compact was initiated by Detroits corporate leaders. The article highlights some of the issues faced in forging compact agreements between the business community, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, school officials, and school activists. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the problems the Detroit Compact faces.

Morality and Economics: Public Assessments of the Adult Entertainment Industry

In this article, the authors examine citizen attitudes toward the adult entertainment industry. Using the results of a public opinion survey of a northeastern American city, the authors find that morality is more important than economics in attitudes about adult entertainment. The authors look at assessments regarding the number of adult entertainment clubs, the overall regulatory environment, and specific policy remedies for dealing with the industry (police raids, higher taxes, tighter zoning, or clustering establishments). On nearly every one of these factors, religion and morality are more important to peoples attitudes than their views about the economic contributions of the industry. These results have important implications for theories emphasizing the economic basis of public policy making.

Anxieties of an Ethnic Transition The Election of the First Latino Mayor in Providence, Rhode Island

This study shows that both race and perceptions about one’s personal economic situation can play a role in how voters assess the likely future of the city under a racially other mayor. Using the historic transition of the Providence mayoralty to a Latino mayor as the context, and new survey data collected in September 2010, our research show that Latinos –the ethnic “winners” of the contest, are more likely to express positive expectations about the city under Mayor Taveras’. On the other hand, whites have a less positive outlook for the city. Both those who lost economically and those whose fortunes improved during the recession express more pessimistic expectations for the city. Our study also shows that blacks who have been affected by the downturn are more likely to have a less optimistic outlook of the city under Taveras’, an indication that intraminority competition is taking place in Providence among the city’s poor minorities.