Majoritarian Cities
Author: Neil Kraus
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2013-10-22
Total Pages: 285
ISBN-13: 0472119028
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPopular public policies often fail to address the needs of the disadvantaged in American cities
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Why Cities Lose
Author: Jonathan A. Rodden
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-06-04
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 1541644255
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA prizewinning political scientist traces the origins of urban-rural political conflict and shows how geography shapes elections in America and beyond Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography. In the late nineteenth century, support for the left began to cluster in cities among the industrial working class. Today, left-wing parties have become coalitions of diverse urban interest groups, from racial minorities to the creative class. These parties win big in urban districts but struggle to capture the suburban and rural seats necessary for legislative majorities. A bold new interpretation of today's urban-rural political conflict, Why Cities Lose also points to electoral reforms that could address the left's under-representation while reducing urban-rural polarization.
Urban Democracy
Author: Oscar W. Gabriel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-12-06
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13: 3322999696
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDer Band enthält eine Bestandsaufnahme der Struktur und Entwicklung großstädtischer Demokratien im Übergang zur postindustriellen Gesellschaft. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, in welcher Weise der Strukturwandel der westlichen Gesellschaften die Einflußverteilung zwischen der Bevölkerung, den Institutionen des Interessenvermittlungssystems und den lokalen Eliten beeinflußt hat.
Lively Cities
Author: Maan Barua
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 2023-05-16
Total Pages: 382
ISBN-13: 1452969663
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA journey through unexplored spaces that foreground new ways of inhabiting the urban One of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. Today domestic animals make up more than twice the biomass of people on the planet, and cities are replete with nonhuman life. Yet current accounts of the urban remain resolutely anthropocentric. Lively Cities departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to a suite of beings—human and nonhuman—that make up the material politics of city making. From macaques and cattle in Delhi to the invasive parakeet colonies in London, Maan Barua examines the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. He reconceptualizes several key themes in urban thought, including infrastructure, the built environment, design, habitation, and everyday practices of dwelling and provides a critical intervention in animal and urban studies. Generating fresh conversations between posthumanism, postcolonialism, and political economy, Barua reveals how human and nonhuman actors shape, integrate, subsume, and relate to urban space in fascinating ways. Through novel combinations of ethnography and ethology, and focusing on interlocutors that are not the usual suspects animating urban theory, Barua’s work considers nonhuman lifeworlds and the differences they make in understanding urbanicity. Lively Cities is an agenda-setting intervention, ultimately proposing a new grammar of urban life.
Saffron Republic
Author: Thomas Blom Hansen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-09-30
Total Pages: 331
ISBN-13: 1009100483
DOWNLOAD EBOOKApproaches contemporary Hindutva as an example of a democratic authoritarianism or an authoritarian populism.
Dividing the Rulers
Author: Yuhui Li
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2019-09-16
Total Pages: 166
ISBN-13: 0472125923
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe election of populist politicians in recent years seems to challenge the commitment to democracy, if not its ideal. This book argues that majority rule is not the problem; rather, the institutions that stabilize majorities are responsible for the suppression of minority interests. Despite the popular notion that social choice instability (or “cycling”) makes it impossible for majorities to make sound legislation, Yuhui Li argues that the best part of democracy is not the large number of people on the winning side; it is that the winners can be easily divided and realigned with the losers in the cycling process. He shows that minorities’ bargaining power depends on their ability to exploit division within the winning coalition and induce its members to defect, an institutionalized uncertainty that is missing in one-party authoritarian systems. Dividing the Rulers theorizes why such division within the majority is important and what kind of institutional features can help a democratic system maintain such division, which is crucial in preventing the “tyranny of the majority.” These institutional solutions point to a direction of institutional reform that academics, politicians, and voters should collectively pursue.
The Federal Government And Urban Problems
Author: M. Carter Mcfarland
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 1000301397
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book discusses the programs and performance of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It deals with the present and future of HUD and the cities it was designed to serve and evaluates HUD activities in economics and housing finance, political science, and urban planning.
Accountability and Responsiveness at the Municipal Level
Author: Sandra Breux
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Published: 2018-07-02
Total Pages: 301
ISBN-13: 0773553746
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Canada, the quality of municipal democracy has been questioned due to three crucial factors. First, voter turnout tends to be significantly lower for municipal elections than it is for other levels of government. Second, the re-election rate of incumbent candidates is higher compared to provincial, territorial, and federal elections. Third, corruption and other scandals have tarnished the image of local democracy. Are cities sufficiently capable of responding to crises and representing the interests of their residents? Accountability and Responsiveness at the Municipal Level addresses these issues through qualitative and quantitative analysis, focusing on some of the most important characteristics of the Canadian municipal scene, including the contexts of partisanship and non-partisanship, the careers and daily work of municipal officials, and multilevel governance. This volume also assists directly in the collection and dissemination of data about cities as there is currently no centralized system for capturing and organizing electoral statistics at the municipal level. Municipal democracy in Canada suffers from a representation deficit. Accountability and Responsiveness at the Municipal Level is an important first step in building high-quality comparative information on the politics of Canada’s cities.
The Adapted City
Author: H George Frederickson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16
Total Pages: 205
ISBN-13: 1315290154
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSelected Contents: 1. Introduction2. Theories of Institutional Dynamics3. Political and Administrative Cities4. The Evolution of Political Cities5. The Evolution of Administrative Cities6. The Evolution of the Model City Charter7. The Discovery of Adapted Cities8. Probing the Complexities of Adapted Cities9. The Conciliated City10. Conclusions
Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era
Author: Clarence N. Stone
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-09-18
Total Pages: 315
ISBN-13: 022628915X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor decades, North American cities racked by deindustrialization and population loss have followed one primary path in their attempts at revitalization: a focus on economic growth in downtown and business areas. Neighborhoods, meanwhile, have often been left severely underserved. There are, however, signs of change. This collection of studies by a distinguished group of political scientists and urban planning scholars offers a rich analysis of the scope, potential, and ramifications of a shift still in progress. Focusing on neighborhoods in six cities—Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Toronto—the authors show how key players, including politicians and philanthropic organizations, are beginning to see economic growth and neighborhood improvement as complementary goals. The heads of universities and hospitals in central locations also find themselves facing newly defined realities, adding to the fluidity of a new political landscape even as structural inequalities exert a continuing influence. While not denying the hurdles that community revitalization still faces, the contributors ultimately put forth a strong case that a more hospitable local milieu can be created for making neighborhood policy. In examining the course of experiences from an earlier period of redevelopment to the present postindustrial city, this book opens a window on a complex process of political change and possibility for reform.
