Introduction: Comparative Civic Culture

ABSTRACT:

This symposium presents a subset of findings from a larger multicity research project using a single operational and methodological scheme to explore the nature of civic culture. The overall purpose is to explore civic cultures in an array of larger cities, test an initial typology of civic culture, and begin to examine the connections between civic culture and local policy. The articles in the symposium make clear that it is possible to empirically identify a parsimonious taxonomy of local civic cultures focusing on systems of community power, values, and decision-making. While many questions about the internal dynamics of each type remain to be answered, the civic cultures identified here appear empirically distinct and theoretically logical. Future research and dialogue need to focus on defining what culture is and what it is not, and then move to explore the linkages between the elements of civic culture and ultimately to local policy.

Notes

1 A clear caveat to this research is that the operational definition of civic culture focuses on the aspects of and actors within the culture as they relate to the policy area of economic development. This is obviously a shortcoming of the analysis but has been done for several reasons. First, since this is essentially exploratory work testing the operation of a new theory of local policy making, it was decided that focusing on one policy area would simplify the task, focus the identification of cultural elements, and begin the theory-building effort. Second, economic development policy is a good initial test of the theory in part because of the extensive policy-making work already done in the area (including extensive work by the authors), but also because it represents an area where public and private interests may conflict, one that most cities are engaged in, and one that is of critical importance to the fiscal health of communities. The long-range goal of this project is to test a model of policy making that can then be refined and extended to apply to other urban policy areas; research is already under way applying the theory to public safety and educational policy.

2 The articles in the symposium represent a subset of the cities and policy areas included in the larger study. Because of space limitations, some focus exclusively on describing and categorizing a case city’s civic culture while others move on to posit initial speculations about the relationship between cultural type and public policy.

3 The Roper Social Benchmark Survey contains some of the aspects of local civic culture but does not focus on governing arrangements and processes and the municipalities included are not nationally representative.