Strategic interaction sequences: the institutionalization of participatory budgeting in New York City

ABSTRACT

An interactive approach to social movements highlights time dynamics in ways more correlational approaches do not, in that interaction and outcomes unfold in sequences as players react to one another. Some aspects of these engagements are shaped by institutional schedules, while others leave discretion to the players. Some institutional schedules, meanwhile, may be reshaped by strategic interactions. By examining the implicit trade-offs and explicit dilemmas that pervade strategic interaction, we see how some are tightly linked to time whereas others more closely reflect ongoing structural situations. Analyzing the case of participatory budgeting in New York City, we focus on two trade-offs, ‘being there’ and ‘powerful allies’, that appear when social movements attempt to institutionalize new policies and processes. These time-based strategic trade-offs complicate activists’ efforts to secure lasting gains.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• strategic interaction
• time
• institutionalization
• participatory budgeting

Acknowledgments

We thank the Politics and Protest Workshop at the CUNY Graduate Center for comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This and the following section draw on secondary sources, media accounts, original interviews, participant observation, and organizational documents. From September 2015 to February 2016, the lead author observed PBNYC’s public forums and Steering Committee meetings and conducted fifteen interviews with organizational leaders and officials involved in the participatory budgeting program. Organizational documents were examined with permission from the Participatory Budgeting Project and Community Voices Heard.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isaac Jabola-Carolus

Isaac Jabola-Carolus is a doctoral student in Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He researches labor, social movements, and participatory democracy.

Luke Elliott-Negri

Luke Elliott-Negri is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of a book chapter about industrial unionism in a forthcoming edited volume and is the coauthor of a policy report on Connecticut’s paid sick days law. His dissertation research analyses three left-wing third parties (the Working Families Party, the Vermont Progressive Party, and the American Labor Party). He is also working on a book project about social movement success and failure.

James M. Jasper

James M. Jasper writes about social movements, culture, and emotions. His most recent books are The Emotions of Protest and the coedited volume, Microfoundations of the Arab Uprisings.

Jessica Mahlbacher

Jessica Mahlbacher is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a 2018 David L. Boren Fellow. She was the Project Manager for the Center for Urban Research’s Toward a 21^st Century City for All initiative on progressive policies at the city-level following the Bloomberg administration. Her dissertation examines mass movement activity influence on the Hong Kong Government’s implementation of the Basic Law since the Handover to China in 1997.

Manès Weisskircher

Manès Weisskircher is a political scientist at TU Dresden and a doctoral candidate at the European University Institute in Florence. His research interests are comparative politics and political sociology, especially the study of social movements, political parties, and democracy.

Anna Zhelnina

Anna Zhelnina is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a researcher at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her dissertation focuses on citizens’ response to large-scale urban renewal projects in New York City and Moscow.