Melissa J. Marschall

RACE AND THE CITY: Neighborhood Context and the Development of Generalized Trust

Previous research has indicated that socio-economic and racial characteristics of an individuals environment influence not only group consciousness and solidarity, but also affect his or her views toward minority or majority groups. Missing from this research is a consideration of how context, social interaction, and interracial experiences combine to shape more general psychological orientations such as generalized trust. In this study we address this gap in the literature by conducting a neighborhood-level analysis that examines how race, racial attitudes, social interactions, and residential patterns affect generalized trust. Our findings suggest not only that the neighborhood context plays an important role in shaping civic orientations, but that the diversity of interaction settings is a key condition for the development of generalized trust.

Institutional Arrangements and the Creation of Social Capital: The Effects of Public School Choice

While the possible decline in the level of social capital in the United States has received considerable attention by scholars such as Putnam and Fukuyama, less attention has been paid to the local activities of citizens that help define a nations stock of social capital. Scholars have paid even less attention to how institutional arrangements affect levels of social capital. We argue that giving parents greater choice over the public schools their children attend creates incentives for parents as “citizen/consumers†to engage in activities that build social capital. Our empirical analysis employs a quasi-experimental approach comparing parental behavior in two pairs of demographically similar school districts that vary on the degree of parental choice over the schools their children attend. Our data show that, controlling for many other factors, parents who choose when given the opportunity are higher on all the indicators of social capital analyzed. Fukuyama has argued that it is easier for governments to decrease social capital than to increase it. We argue, however, that the design of government institutions can create incentives for individuals to engage in activities that increase social capital.

Networks to Nowhere: Segregation and Stratification in Networks of Information about Schools

Theory: Public sector reforms expanding citizen choice are hypothesized to create many of the benefits of private markets, in part by increasing the incentives of citizens to search for information about the quality of public services. Social scientists have shown that networks can provide valuable shortcuts to the information necessary to participate in this expanded market for public goods. Critics of public sector markets argue, however, that choice will heighten existing inequalities, increasing stratification by education and income and racial segregation. This criticism is particularly evident in debates about school choice. Hypothesis: The quality of networks in school districts with choice is hypothesized to be higher than in school districts without choice and to increase with parental education levels. Networks are also hypothesized to be segregated by race. In addition, differences in networks as a function of education and the segregation of networks by race may be greater in choice districts than in districts with no or little choice. Methods: Two stage generalized least square techniques are used to predict the quality of discussants and racial patterns in education networks while controlling for the problem of nonrandom assignment inherent in different levels of parental involvement in school choice. Results: Higher socioeconomic status individuals are more likely to have higher quality education networks. Education networks also exhibit a high degree of racial segregation. Institutional incentives do not markedly affect the nature of information networks about education-but where effects are found, they tend to indicate higher levels of class stratification and racial segregation.

Does the Shoe Fit? Testing Models of Participation for African-American and Latino Involvement in Local Politics

Despite the voluminous literature on participation, when it comes to the participatory behavior of racial and ethnic minorities and lower-income groups, many questions remain unanswered. The author tests the extent to which four theoretical models—socioeconomic status, psychological orientations, social context, and mobilization resource—explain the participation of whites, African-Americans, and Latinos in local political and community activities. Based on a sample of inner-city New York respondents, the author finds that existing theories differentially explain participation across both ethnic group and participatory activity. More generally, the findings indicate that more attention needs to be focused on how the broader social and institutional environment shapes the behaviors and attitudes that ultimately foster political engagement.

Heuristics, Low Information Rationality, and Choosing Public Goods Broken Windows as Shortcuts to Information about School Performance

The United States is in the midst of a reform movement empowering parents to choose among an expanded set of schools for their children. Inherent in these reforms is the idea that parents will gather the information necessary to make informed choices from among the set. Opponents of school choice argue that lower-income parents will not be able to gather information about their options to select appropriate schools for their children. The authors show that visual cues can indicate levels of academic performance and school safety—the two dimensions of schools that concern parents—and may allow parents to make good choices among schools.

The Study of Local Elections

Given the large number of cases and considerable institutional and contextual variation across and within local governments, one might assume that the study of local elections is an area already well harvested by political scientists. The truth, however, is that this area of inquiry is relatively unexplored. In fact, to say that a field of study on local elections exists would be a bit of an overstatement. Not only is the literature rather small and not particularly cohesive, but the data collection and methods of analysis are also somewhat primitive, particularly compared to research on state and federal elections. While, on the one hand, this lack of subfield development means that there are many unanswered and even unexplored questions, on the other hand, it means that the possibilities for future research are practically limitless. Clearly, the study of local elections has been made more challenging by the sheer number of local governments in the United States. Of the 89,527 governmental units enumerated in 2007, 89,476 (99.9%) were local governments, with municipalities numbering 19,492 (U.S. Census Bureau 2007a). Not surprisingly, the number of public officials holding elective positions in local government is also enormous—roughly half a million. In fact, 96% of all elected officials represent local rather than state or federal jurisdictions, and officials from municipalities constitute the largest share of this population, at 27%. Beyond the numbers, several additional features distinguish municipal governments from either state or federal governments and contribute to the complexity of their study. First, at no other level of government is the timing of elections so varied. Indeed, with only 23% of cities holding elections exclusively in even years (International City/County Management Association [ICMA] 2002), the term “off-cycle” would be irrelevant were it not for local governments. Keeping track of elections is thus no small matter. Second, the methods that cities adopt to elect officials are extremely varied. Unlike congressional and nearly all state legislative elections, most city council elections (66%) are multi-member (at-large) rather than singlemember (district/ward; ICMA 2002). Finally, the prevalence of nonpartisan elections is a notable feature of local elections, with 77% of cities reportedly using this type of election in 2001 (ICMA 2002). Heavy reliance on nonpartisan elections has likely discouraged elections scholars from studying local elections for the simple reason that it leaves no simple way to study vote choice. Indeed, scholars who have investigated vote choice have approached the subject as a choice between either the incumbent and challenger(s) (Berry and Howell 2007; Krebs 1998; Oliver and Ha 2007) or the minority and nonminority candidate(s) (Barreto 2007; Barreto, Villarreal, and Woods 2005; Brockington et al. 1998; for an alternate view, see Ferreira and Gyourko 2009). Consequently, apart from case study research, most local elections studies ignore vote choice completely.

Are We There Yet? The Voting Rights Act and Black Representation on City Councils, 1981–2006

Sound evidence demonstrating what, if any, role the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has played in the impressive gains minorities have made in local office holding over the last 45 years remains in short supply. The present study is motivated by three crucial questions. First, where are gains in minority office holding most apparent, and how are these gains related to the VRA? Second, while studies have noted gains in black representation over time, the question of how the VRA in particular has contributed to these gains remains unclear. Finally, given claims made by opponents of the 2006 legislation reauthorizing the VRA that it was no longer needed, the question of when the VRA has been most efficacious, and if it continues to be relevant, is also salient. Our findings suggest that the VRA has been and continues to be an important tool in ensuring black descriptive representation, particularly in places with a legacy of racial intimidation and discrimination.

Linking the Process and Outcomes of Parent Involvement Policy to the Parent Involvement Gap

This study compares what schools are doing to engage parents and analyzes the efficacy of these initiatives across predominantly Black, Latino, and White schools. Using the National Center for Education Statistics’s (NCES) Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS, 1999-2004), we specify a model that accounts both for factors associated with school policies and practices to engage parents in school- and home-based activities and the extent to which these policies affect parent involvement. Findings indicate that predominantly Black and Latino schools achieve significant gains in parent involvement as the number of policies in place to support and encourage participation increases, but that not all programs achieve the same results within or across racial contexts. Furthermore, we find leadership by minority principals, teacher attributes, responsibilities and training, as well as greater shares of Title 1 funding are positively and significantly related to school- and home-based policies across all three racial contexts.

Book Review: Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership, by Zoltan L. Hajnal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 219 pp.

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