Citizen Participation and Urban Capacity Building: Representation and Conflict

Abstract

The paper focuses on two major urban capacities to which citizen participation policies are expected to contribute—the capacity to represent diverse interests and the capacity to sustain conflict. The comparative strengths and weaknesses of two different citizen participation structures are considered—single-purpose, appointed advisory boards and multiple-purpose, elected neighborhood councils. Drawing from both the literature and original data from Wichita’s innovative citizen participation approach, the paper suggests ways in which each participatory form contributes to urban representation and the avoidance of rancorous conflict.

Notes

1 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), Citizen Participation in the American Federal System (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980).

2 Stuart Langton, Citizen Participation in America (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1978).

3 Joseph Rodgers, Jr., Citizen Committees: A Guide to Their Use in Local Government (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977), pp. 19–21.

4 ACIR, Citizen Participation, pp. 221–278.

5 Sec, for example. Sherry Arnstein, “Eight Rungs on the Ladder of Citizen Participation,” in Citizen Participation: Effecting Community Change, ed. Edgar Cahn and Barry Passett (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 70.

6 Sec Richard Cole, Citizen Participation and the Urban Policy Process (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1974) and Douglas Yates, Neighborhood Democracy (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973).

7 Yates, Neighborhood Democracy, p. 31.

8 Stuart Langton, “What is Citizen Participation?” in Citizen Participation in America, pp. 21–23.

9 Yates, Neighborhood Democracy, Cole, Citizen Participation.

10 Langton, “What is Citizen Participation?”

11 This research, by the author and Ray Davis, Professor of Political Science, University of Kansas, supported by a grant through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, was initiated in November, 1979. In-person interviews were conducted with the chief elected or appointed officials in all Kansas communities of at least 5,000 population. In addition, an intensive case study is being conducted in Wichita, Kansas.

12 Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).

13 See, for example: D. Campbell and J. Feagin, “Black Politics in the South,” Journal of Politics. 37 (1975), 129–159;

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A. Karnig. “Black Representation on City Councils,”Urban Affairs Quarterly. 12 (1976), 223–242; D. Taebel, “Minority Representation on City Councils: The Impact of Structure on Blacks and Hispanics,”Social Science Quarterly, 59 (1978), 142–152; and T. Robinson and T. Dye, “Reformism and Black Representation on City Councils,”Social Science Quarterly, 59 (1978), 133–141, all of which generally support the thesis of at-large systems resulting in minority under-representation. S. MacManus, “City Council Election Procedures and Minority Representation: Are I hey Related?”Social Science Quarterly, 59 (1978), 153–161, reaches somewhat different conclusions. See also the challenge and rebuttal on this research in Social Science Quarterly, 60 (1979), 336–340. Referenda on at-large systems have been advanced in San Antonio, San Francisco, Savannah. Fort Worth, San Jose and Charlotte, and class-action suits challenging at-large elections have occurred in Dallas, Houston and Montgomery. See R. Mundt and P. Heilig, “Impacts of the Change to District Representation in Urban Government,” paper presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 25 April, 1980.

14 Clarence Stone, Robert Whelan and William Murin, Urban Policy and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979), pp. 79–80.

15 See Lester Milbrath and M. Goel. Political Participation (Skokie: Rand McNally, 1977).

16 Cole, Citizen Participation, p. 89.

17 Cole, Citizen Participation, pp. 94–95.

18 Richard Rich, “Equity and Institutional Design in Urban Service Delivery,”The Politics and Economics of Urban Services, ed. R. Lineberry (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978), pp. 121–148.

19 Richard Rich, “The Roles of Neighborhood Organisations in Urban Service Delivery,” Urban Affairs Papers I (1979), pp. 81–93.

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20 Daniel P. Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (New York: Free Press, 1969).

21 Kenneth Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen-Politicians (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

22 Prewitt, Recruitment of Political Leaders, p. 143.

23 The city’s proposal was to develop an appointed Human Resources advisory board, which would merge the activities of the central council and two other existing appointed advisory boards. The proposal would leave the neighborhood councils intact.

24 Walter Grove and Herbert Costner, “Organizing the Poor: An Evaluation of a Strategy,” Social Science Quarterly 50 (1969), pp. 643–657.

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25 Cole, Citizen Participation, p. 91.

26 From a paper by Norman and Susan Fainstein, discussed at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 1980.

27 Joe Feagin and Harlan Hahn, Ghetto Revolts (New York: Macmillan, 1973).

28 See Robert Crain, Elihu Katz and Donald Rosenthal, The Politics of Community Conflict (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969) and James Coleman, Community Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1957).

29 Coleman, Community Conflict.

30 Cole calls this the “official perspective” on citizen participation—see Citizen Participation, pp.7–9.

31 Cole, Citizen Participation, pp. 106–111.

32 Yates, Neighborhood Democracy, pp. 103–107.

33 Carol Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

34 Aaron Wildavsky, Speaking Truth to Power (Boston: Little Brown, 1979), pp. 252–266.