Paul Schumaker

Responsiveness Bias in 51 American Communities

This paper is concerned with responsiveness bias, a previously uninvestigated dimension of political inequality, which refers to the degree to which governments respond unequally to the public policy preferences of various community subpopulations (e.g., blacks, whites, upper-class and lower-class citizens). An empirical examination of responsiveness bias in the 51 cities of the Permanent Community Sample reveals that responsiveness is usually biased in favor of the advantaged (upper-SES, white) segments of the population, although a few cities exhibit bias in favor of the disadvantaged. An analysis of the environmental and political factors affecting responsiveness bias shows that larger, more wealthy cities, with well-organized interest groups having little minority representation, are most likely to bias their policies in ways preferred by the advantaged.

Estimating the First and (Some of the) Third Faces of Community Power

The author provides an approach to estimating two dimensions of community power. The analysis of the first face of power concerns the direct causal impact of elected representatives, bureaucrats, notables, group leaders, individual activists, and citizens on policy decisions. The analysis of the third face of power concerns the capacity of such actors to influence policies indirectly by influencing the preferences of other actors. An examination of 28 issues in Lawrence, Kansas, suggests that only representatives significantly exercise the first face of power and that only group leaders may exercise the third face of power (through their ability to influence the preferences of representatives).

Ethics Matter: The Morality and Justice Principles of Elected City Officials and Their Impact on Urban Issues

ABSTRACT: This article pursues the thesis that ethics matter in urban policymaking. Interviews with 95 elected officials in 12 cities revealed the officials’ support for—and opposition to—many principles of political morality and political justice. Officials regarded their ethical principles as almost as important as economic constraints on their policy decisions, and much more important than political, legal, jurisdictional, and cultural considerations. The role of ethics in the resolution of 93 issues that arose in their communities varied from minimal to decisive. On some occasions ethical considerations served mainly as justifications for policy decisions made primarily on other grounds. But more often, significant numbers of officials drew largely, and even primarily, on their own moral judgments when casting their votes on community issues. And some policies were driven by consensual moral understandings.

Group Involvements in City Politics and Pluralist Theory

The assessments of 75 councilors and mayors in eight cities in the Kansas City metropolitan area provide global measures of group organization, activity, and influence in community politics and measures of their specific involvements in 73 issues that arose in these communities. While variations in group involvement and influence—both in exercising social control and contributing to social production—are reported, the most general findings are that groups are less involved in city politics and their limited involvements are less conflictive than suggested by orthodox understandings of pluralist theory. I argue that these results point to the need to reformulate pluralist theory, not abandon it.

The Effectiveness of Militant Tactics in Contemporary Urban Protest

It is frequently argued by both activists and social scientists that relatively powerless members of political communities--minority groups, the lower class, the poor, etc.--can enhance their influence and obtain economic and political benefits by mobilizing for militant political action (Alinsky, 1946; Wilson, 1961; Waskow, 1967; Kahn, 1970; and Cloward and Piven, 1975). Recently two extensive investigations of protest movements have presented systematic evidence documenting the effectiveness of militancy. In The Strategy of Social Protest, William Gamson (1975) has examined the activities of 53 American protest groups that mobilized between 1800 and 1945 to challenge some aspect of the status quo. As part of his analysis, Gamson measured both the strategies utilized by protest groups (whether or not the group used violence or some other type of &dquo;constraint&dquo; such as strikes and boycotts) and the outcome of the protest activity. Gamson found that &dquo;unruly groups, those that use violence, strikes, and other constraints, have better than average success rates&dquo; (Gamson, 1975: 87). In a somewhat complementary analysis of protest in Europe between 1830 and 1930, Charles Tilly et al. (1975) found that very few &dquo;initially powerless groups...accomplish any significant part of their objectives without some involvement in violence.&dquo;

John Rawls, Barack Obama, and the Pluralist Political Consensus

To counter partisan polarization, political theorists like John Rawls and political leaders like Barack Obama have sought to locate and express consensual elements of American culture that can appeal to or at least be accepted by people having political, religious, moral, and philosophical differences. While orthodox pluralism previously recognized the need for a normative consensus to regulate political struggles, a new principled pluralism expands on the contents of the American consensus by proposing many political principles and philosophical assumptions that are articulated at an intermediate level of abstraction, that express the emerging (though not always present) common sensibilities of most Americans, and that can be used to justify political policies and practices.

The Community Bases of Minority Educational Attainment.

The reduction of the disparity in educational attainment between minority groups and whites in the U.S. is a key factor in greater economic and occupational equality. Research on factors which promote or retard the increase of this disparity have been inadequate for two reasons. As a result, educational policy decisions which might reduce this problem have been either misinformed or unaided by previous research. The point is raised that the effects of what is called “community contexts” is a large, untapped area of research which will help inform policy decisions and thus encourage greater minority educational attainment. Several measures of education attainment of the Chicano population of 34 counties in the state of Kansas are analyzed for the role of “community contexts.” Generalizations from this population are made to other minority groups.

Affirmative Action, Principles of Justice, and the Evolution of Urban Theory

Analysis of interviews with 112 elected officials in 12 American cities indicates that their support for affirmative action is more strongly influenced by the justice principles they hold than by the contextual variables normally emphasized by leading urban paradigms. Allegiance to fair equal opportunity and blocking cumulative inequalities enhances support for affirmative action, whereas allegiance to maximizing aggregate utility and retaining market allocations reduces such support. These results suggest that urban paradigms should include the moral principles of participants as well as variables describing the interests that officials represent and the economic, social, political, and cultural contexts that constrain their decisions.