Richard E. DeLeon

The Urban Antiregime: Progressive Politics in San Francisco

San Francisco is in transition between two urban regimes, a crumbling business-dominated progrowth regime and an emerging progressive slow-growth regime, which is best described as an antiregime because it functions mainly to obstruct the exercise of power. To convert an urban movement into a regime, the citys progressive leaders must reconcile the divergent political interests of coalition elements, renegotiate a partnership with the private sector that is consistent with slow-growth objectives, and settle disputes surrounding Mayor Agnoss tenure. The progressive coalitions exclusive reliance upon a small-business economy is not sufficient to resolve contradictions between materialist and postmaterialist goals in the progressive agenda.

IDENTITY POLITICS AND LOCAL POLITICAL CULTURE Some Comparative Results from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey

Using the Social Capital Benchmark Survey (SCBS) data sets, the authors conducted a multilevel comparative study of identity politics and political culture in the United States and 30 urban communities. Analysis showed that gender, race, class, and religion predict political ideology, electoral behavior, and political protest in the national sample. Replications in the community samples, however, revealed significant differences in the patterns of relationships among those variables. Some patterns deviated markedly from the national norm, particularly with respect to race as a predictor of political protest. Using an index of new political culture, the authors show that “place matters” as a contextual influence on the strength and direction of relationships between social identity (particularly race and religion) and political outcomes.