s testament to the power of community-spiritedness anda willingness to identify with the entire region

These localities would retain many of the functions enjoyed to-day, including education, police and fire protection, limited zoningpowers, libraries, and community services. They could elect councilmembers and administrators, but their boundaries would be subject toperiodic reconfiguration

is their limited capacity to achieve major publicworks

New Rochelle con-tinues to maintain a broad mix of racial and economic groups

Although it is unclear whether such places have morecivic capacity than other types of communities (such questions await ex-ploration in future research), some limited anecdotal evidence suggeststhat they might

The best way torevitalize suburban civic life is to promote greater racial and economicintegration.

it is unreason-able to expect that in today’s metropolitan areas, economic and racialdiversity could be maintained in communities under 50,000 in size.

i.e., local governments needto be forced to work in concert rather than in opposition

local governments need to be small

particularly among whitesand the affluent seeking to protect their racial and economic privileges

If we want to address the problems of democracy insuburbia, we need to rearrange the configuration of local governments inmetropolitan areas.

between the neighboring towns rather thanamong citizens

too often shield residents from the conflicts and problemsthat exist within their greater metropolitan community

Municipalities with larger popula-tions lose vital civic capacity as residents tune out local politics; thesmaller the local unit, the more citizens are involved in community af-fairs

ocalities with a weak civic capacity have lesscapability of making local government responsive and fewer options foraddressing social problems; consequently, they will be subject to greatersocial tension.

Localities with greater civic capacity have greater resources available toidentify social problems, develop governmental solutions if possible, andcraft alternatives if public efforts cannot be mustered.

so a social order benefits from its unpaid civic sector.

replete

However,in communities with greater civic capacity, citizens can be more easilyorganized and mobilized.

Bypreventing municipal institutions from addressing such conflicts, politicalfragmentation undermines the much-lauded role of America’s localities asarenas for democratic governance

any issue involving the redistribution of wealth to groupswith less revenue-producing capability will not be advanced by a locality

lso limits effectivecitizen participation in the decision-making process

by their very nature, are not suitable forlocal resolution

using local institutionsto limit the scope of conflict in metropolitan areas.

Any change in the number of participants,Schattschneider argues, changes the results.

particularly nonpartisan types of civic engagement such as workingwith neighbors or joining organizations.

inevitable conflict that arises from social interaction

roblem of intramunicipal discrepancies in thedistribution of public resources, and in its conceptions of democratic citi-zens.

Civic withdrawal insegregated suburbs may not only lead to a narrow vision of self amongcitizens; it may also preempt the opportunity for learning essential demo-cratic skills and a broader understanding of community.

find that neitheris antecedent to the other.

political participationcorresponds to higher trust, but more trusting people are also more likelyto be politically active, although campaign work seems to increase levelsof trust more than vice versa

The social segregation of suburbs is not only harmful todemocratic practice but impoverishing of the human spirit.

the social resources and links to other people that facilitate the achieve-ment of goals.

he in the end acquires a habit and taste forserving them.

changed what citizens consider to be in their “interest.”

because it alters their conceptions of themselves and their rela-tionship to society.

but an existential activity with tran-scendent potentiality.

the civil societyperspective views citizen participation as not simply important for demo-cratic organization but essential for realizing one’s humanity.

interdependent

The ordering of these competing preferences depends upon how Irealize myself at any particular moment, an understanding that is pro-foundly shaped by my institutional and social circumstances.

who is fully formedbefore the confrontation begins.

derive theirincome and other services from the remainder of the metropolis

divorce themselves from the greater community with whichthey interact

only to highlight the antidemocratic character of suburban institu-tional arrangements

although citiesdid at one time have such a character

not all citizens are equally mobile

the multi-faceted and inherently social condition of human existence

not from democratic actionbut from the potential mobility of revenue-producing citizens.

they can simply“vote with their feet” and move to another jurisdiction

citizens have replaced old-fashioned political ac-tion with modern consumer behavior.

These models startwith the Hobbesian-like premise that individuals in a political system areisolated and autonomous, with the added condition that all individualsare motivated to act in ways that maximize the utility of their actions.

If all people in a society think alike, then anyone member can speak for the group.

also varies with the diver-sity of opinion in a polity.

create a protected sphere enabling indi-viduals to pursue their own goals in relative isolation.

civil society and social capital arguments

Similarly, if a person shares a politywith people who have an identical set of preferences, then the necessityof mass participation is quite low, as any one voter can articulate theviews of many.

Ifrepresentatives are adequately representing the aggregate of citizen inter-ests, then the level of citizen participation either necessary or possible inthe governing process is fairly low

that higher participation levels are an unquestionedbenefit for a democracy because they correspond to more authentic, rep-resentative, and fair governing processes

are nec-essarily harmful for American democracy

the content of political life

institu-tionalizing of social differences among residents of a common metro-politan area

who par-ticipates?

Most important, the findings highlight the often over-looked role of social contexts and institutions in civic life

suburbanization alsoeliminates many of the incentives that draw citizens into the publicrealm.

the civic benefits of smaller size are undermined.

The suburb superficially restores thedream of Jeffersonian democracy

not surprisingly, arequick to draw on negative clich ́es.

decry the isolating, banal, andoverly privatized quality of suburban areas

Their soulless, anticivic,and anticommunity designs are putatively fostering an alienation thatthreatens the fabric of American social life

In this view, the emptiness ofLittleton’s soul was caused by the emptiness of its landscape

city

re approximately 5 percent lesslikely to contact officials, work informally with their neighbors, and votefrequently in local elections

Although people in the least residential cities exhibit slightly lower ratesof contacting and meeting, they are just as likely to work informally andvote in local elections

and thecommunity is deprived of the human capital needed to sustain a widerange of organizational choices

None of the characteristics of residen-tially predominant cities has any effect on civic participation once individ-ual traits are considered

high participatory norms

Without the pressures of real estate developers,bedroom suburbs may have few issues on the municipal agenda thatcause much controversy.

For example,some scholars conjecture that necessary commuting deprives bedroomsuburbanites of time and resources available for social interaction andcivic work.

in reality those of indi-vidual class and age

According to this viewpoint, social behavior derives mostly fromthe individual characteristics of the bedroom suburbanite rather thanfrom anything endemic to the bedroom suburb

greater percentage of people with financial investments in their localityand, given the property-centered nature of local politics, will be moreinterested in the affairs of city hall.

Municipalities with many homeowners are places where more res-idents are invested in their communities: socially, financially, and histori-cally

stimulate civic involvement.

Smaller places, with a smaller retail market and limitedlabor pool, will have a harder time sustaining work sites

Average Percentages of Commuters, Families, and Homeowners by City Siz

but what type of use- or exchange-value they desire from their property and whether there are groups withlarge financial investments seeking to manipulate local politics, often atthe expense of neighborhood quality of life.

such as the prevalence ofgarage facades or the absence of public spaces, are typically accused ofalienating the citizenry.

the absence of work sites

inhibits spontaneous social contact and citizen involvement in lo-cal politics

made residents more engaged incommunity affairs

then growth-oriented interests are necessarily excludedfrom city politics

often in response to threats totheir quality of life

has been the primary catalyst of metropolitan growth.

continued to be nestled close to industrial areas. It was onlywith the advent of the streetcar and the automobile that the proximitybetween work and home began to widen and an entirely new type ofplace arose, the bedroom suburb

thereby limited in the powers theycan wield

Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and Port Chester,which are seeking jobs and economic growth.

he type of place typically equated with politicalcontroversy

de-pends upon active citizens and municipal cohesion

suburbanization offers great promise for nur-turing America’s civic health

In general, Ifind few effects of institutions on any civic acts outside of voting

it is not a crucialfactor in shaping the civic actions of the mass public

edroom suburbs,” zoningcodes bar most nonresidential development and restrict the range of localpolitical conflic

By separating racialgroups along municipal boundaries, suburbanization stifles debatearound racial issues, effectively demobilizing citizens from public life.

People of all races in predominantly white communities are muchless likely to work with neighbors, contact officials, or lobby community

The first part of the chapter explores how suburbanization hascontributed to municipal economic differentiation

The Citizen ParticipationStudy is a large-scale, two-stage survey of a random sample of Americansconducted in 1989 and 1990.

less likely to have politicalcontroversies but may have stronger ties between neighbors

In some places, peopleare more familiar with their neighbors or host more local events; in otherplaces, people hardly know their fellow townsfolk. Where such people aresocially familiar, neighbors are more likely to talk about politics and re-cruit others for local activities.

we need to first determine why they are more interested in publicaffairs, how they acquire civic skills and resources, or why they are morelikely to be mobilized for political action.

interest

mobiliza-tion.

determinants

not take the social or political environment of therespondent into account

and that these increased opportunitiesstimulate citizen involvement

these behaviors outline the contours ofthis slippery and problematic term—“community

Using anysingle act as a measure, we may misrepresent the whole of suburbancivic life.

somehow lesscommitted to the localities and less interactive with their neighbors

In places with aricher associational life, citizens will be able to link more easily with theirneighbors, will be informed about local issues, and will express theiropinions to local institutions

According to manythinkers, the political norms and networks of reciprocity that citizens de-velop in voluntary organizations are vital for maintaining the health ofdemocracy.

Participating in voluntary organizations

Attending community board meetings

voters rarely determine specific policies and are usually justelecting representatives

Voting is also thekey mechanism for controlling political leaders, with the reelection man-date ensuring some responsiveness to citizen concerns. Thus the simplestand crudest way of gauging a polity’s democratic performance is to seewhether or not its citizens are voting.

they must regularlyarticulate their preferences to others and their political institutions

is maximizing the input of the citi-zenry.

the publicchoice model is not well suited for evaluating the democratic implicationsof suburbanization

such as the housing market, proximity toemployment, and such personal desires as proximity to family

“vote with their feet

Theorists of community power focusmostly on larger cities. Their analyses typically presume plurality of inter-ests within a community and then work to determine how well thoseinterests are represented within the policy-making process

Local government is the foundation of American democracy

then we canevaluate them in concert to understand the effects of suburbanization

age has become an increasingly prominent commu-nity trait

In today’s poly-morphous metropolis, land use distinguishes suburbs both from centralcities and from other suburbs

has taken theracial divisions that once separated neighborhoods within cities and insti-tutionalized them with municipal boundaries.

homogeneity

most architecturalcriticisms are simply too vague and unspecified to meaningfully designateplaces in the contemporary metropolis

putatively

Asidefrom their smaller size, middle-class Montclair, affluent Short Hills, andrural Hopewell have little in common that distinguishes them from grittyElizabeth or academic Princeton.

18million people in the greater New York area to 56,735 people in Enid,Oklahoma

Rather, the institutional change must be with the way thatmunicipal borders are drawn and land-use decisions are made.

Byencouraging certain residents to “tune out” local politics or to see them-selves as different from the greater metropolis, suburban institutions aredepriving the metropolitan community of vital civic capacity

by segregating the population and suppressing citi-zen involvement in community affairs, is depriving many localities andmetropolitan areas of their civic capacity and thus their ability to solvemany contemporary social problems

In other words, localitieshave relied upon their civic capacity to maintain the functioning and pro-mote the well-being of society.

It refers toall types of civic and political activities, be they softball leagues or politi-cal campaigns

so-cial conflicts that once existed among citizens are transformed into con-flicts between local government

Suburbs often distort this conflict mandate bydividing citizens along class and racial lines

should function so as to bring together most people within ageographic vicinity to collectively solve problems related to their area

suburbanization is underminingthe optimal functioning of America’s local democratic institutions.

they do not revealwhether any differences that may exist between suburban and nonsubur-ban residents are systematic.

Aswas demonstrated in Weimar Germany, a strong civil society is no guar-antee of stable democratic institutions or peaceful coexistence among the

for example,wealthy Beverly Hills, eclectic Santa Monica, residential Walnut, and im-poverished Compton are all one kind of place (suburb), as distinguishedfrom Los Angeles (city).

physical design and social composition of suburbs arekeeping them isolated and preoccupied with private concerns

community and fellow-ship among citizens.

many contain nothing buthomes, nothing but white people, or nothing but the affluent.

municipal identity

future work might pay greater attention to intra-statevariation in ballot initiative support as it pertains to the signalingmechanism

but future work might pay more attentionto the implications of substate decisions—and resulting potentialintra-state variation

i have shown thatthe policy landscapes in the states they represent affect the behav-ior of members of Congress.

this suggests that state-level legalization has notdisproportionately improved public opinion in the states where itis adopted, thus suggesting that public opinion shifts are not driv-ing observed effects.

would make it more difficult for graham to continue toblock legislation liberalizing marijuana policy at the federal level

made marijuana such a priority in the 116thCongress.

in addition to using its growing resources for lobbying andcampaign contributions, the marijuana industry has leveraged itseconomic growth to engage politically by mobilizing consumersand employees

the data reveal a sharp increasein lobbying from the marijuana industry coinciding with recentstate adoption of adult-use legalization

$130 per capita(an average of over a billion dollars in revenue

ifind that neither time since the initiative nor score of the initiativevote is associated with pro-marijuana behavior in Congress

state legalization had a stronger effect on roll-call votes on dOJ interference (which only would affect legalizingstates) than on roll-call votes for the MOre act

would have the strongest effects on support forsimilar federal legalization bills

political learning, and one mentioned policylearning

i do not find thatlegalization had a statistically significant effect on roll-call votingfor this bill.

Citizen initiatives and Billsponsorship Pre- and Post-Legalization Wave

we would expect an associationbetween initiative rules and congressional behavior on marijuanabefore the legalization wave

in-crease of .06 in the bill sponsorship score

which may be driven by the fact that sponsor-ship of this bill was more partisan than the others

demonstrate that citizen initiative rules are astrong instrument for legalization.

the saFe Banking act, the states act, and the MOreact

use took placelong before the 116th Congress.

this suggests that initiatives are atleast conditionally exogenous to congressional behavior on mari-juana issues.

generally holds more liberal views onmarijuana than representatives in state legislatures.

initiated a wave of state medical marijuana laws

total of $3.5 billion inlegal sales in 2014 to over $13.5 billion in legal sales in 2019

with a full 92% of those arrests just for posses-sion

xogenous variation in likelihood oflegalization

a greater share of variation in member be-havior is explained by partisanship, so a competitive district mightbe represented very differently depending on the outcome of aclose election

Public policies can also shapethe way citizens view government, and through these interpretiveeffects (Pierson 1993) shift political behavior

High taxes on marijuana are often used to fundstate programs in areas like education and criminal justice, andalso to bolster general fund revenues.

members of Congress have an incentive to sup-port policies that benefit business interests central to economiesin the places they represent

the organized interests that develop and growtheir economic presence will also have greater political sway

which types of firms establish and grow

in this way, the advocacy of regulated firmscan lead to the upward diffusion of state policies

they do not find similar resultsin the senate

in particular, whetherthey generated political gains for the politicians sponsoring them

this type of “snowball effect,” where prior policy adoptionat lower levels of government increases the likelihood of adop-tion at higher levels, tends to dominate a potential “pressure valve”effect—whereby lower-level adoption relieves pressure for policyadoption at the higher level

Put simply, policy makers often prefer to enact policiesthat have been shown to be effective in other contexts

find that state policy decisions in the area ofelectronic commerce have only minor effects on national represen-tation in Congress that diminish over the course of the legislativeprocess

and top-down vertical dif-fusion from the national level to the states

While there is much literature demonstrating dynamicsof horizontal policy diffusion across the states

voter behavior or interest groupmobilization, but also on the actions of lawmakers in Congress

these ef-fects are most likely to manifest in policy areas like energy andlabor in which both state and federal governments are active policymakers,

i find little support forthe view that effects were driven by positive shifts to public favora-bility caused by state legalization

isthat initiative votes generated a signal that allowed members ofCongress to learn about levels of constituent support