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Objective. This article's aim is to test the impact of black political and bureaucratic representation on the rate at which blacks are arrested for order maintenance violations in U.S. cities. Methods. Using data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administration Survey, the Census Bureau, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, for all U.S. cities over 100,000 population, the article first documents the continuing influence of black elected officials in promoting black representation on police forces. After establishing the appropriateness of order maintenance policing as a follow-up focus, the article then tests hypotheses that link variation in the rate of black order maintenance arrests to black political and bureaucratic representation, contingent upon form of government. Results. Black political representation does constrain black order maintenance arrests, while black representation on the police force does not. Conclusion. Even with a more racially representative police force in place, black political representation is what matters in constraining controversial patterns of police practice.

In this creative and important book, Eric Oliver and his coauthors offer a comprehensive analysis of a largely overlooked phenomenon, electoral behavior in smaller communities, here defined as jurisdictions with populations under 100,000. In the broadest sense, the central theme of the book is that elections are different in these small jurisdictions from what theories and empirical analyses of national, state, and big-city elections have made familiar. More specifically, they argue that a triumvirate of jurisdictional characteristics—1) population size, 2) scope (i.e., the extent to which institutional arrangements provide government officials with powers on a broad array of matters), and 3) bias (i.e., the extent to which government distributes resources in something other than an evenhanded fashion)—are crucial factors shaping the behavior of voters and candidates and, hence, are the essential character of elections. In separate chapters analyzing who votes, who runs for office, what shapes incumbent advantage, and what shapes voter choice, the authors explore hypotheses developed in their overview chapter about how size, scope, and bias impact each of these aspects of local elections.

Employing policy feedback theory to a series of local government programs, Elaine B. Sharp shows that these programs do have consequences with respect to citizens’ political participation. With this clear-eyed analysis, Sharp finds that local governments’ social program activities actually dampen participation of the have-nots, while cities’ development programs reinforce the political involvement of already-privileged business interests. _x000B_

Many local governments are promoting sustainability initiatives, ranging from progressive urban design and development to climate protection. Past research suggests that governments are often motivated to act because of the possible co-benefits, such as cost savings, associated with sustainability. Many sustainability programs target inhouse city operations, however, thus ensuring that co-benefits accrue to local government while not imposing regulations on businesses or residents. Co-benefits might be less likely to drive decision-making when sustainability initiatives are directed to the larger community. In this article, we examine why some cities actively pursue the more difficult prospect of communitywide sustainability policy. We merge secondary data with original data from a survey of local governments to explore three broad theoretical influences on decisionmaking: (1) interest group pressure, (2) problem severity or need, and (3) network strength. Our results suggest that, regardless of the institutional structure within a city, participation in some interlocal networks promotes communitywide sustainability initiatives.

Objectives. This article analyzes competing explanations for variation in the relative size of contemporary police forces in larger U.S. cities. The featured explanation is conflict theory, which previously provided much evidence for a racial threat thesis but limited evidence that racial insurgency affected police mobilization in the 1960s and 1970s. Methods. The study sample consists of the 66 cities with a population of at least 250,000 in 2000. Aggregate data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Congressional Quarterly's America Votes, and the U.S. Census Bureau are combined with a content analysis using the Lexis-Nexis regional news database to generate the data set. OLS regression modeling is applied to the analysis of this cross-sectional data set. Results. This analysis shows that the size of contemporary police forces is substantially shaped not only by the legacy of the 1960-1970 wave of racial unrest in the United States, but also by reaction to racial disorders in the 1980s and 1990s and by the prevalence of racial minorities in the current population. Conclusions. Police departments' relative force size in 2000 is not only a result of incremental growth from the size attained by 1980, but also is dramatically shaped by whether the city experienced a race riot from 1980-2000 and, to a lesser extent, the size of the minority population and the violent crime rate. City wealth is a less robust indicator; and there is no evidence that either community ideology or the degree of uptake of community policing matters.

Objective. The objective of this article is to examine whether racial tolerance attitudes are influenced by the character of the urban subculture in which individuals live. Specifically, is there a significant association between Florida's (2002) concept of creative class and racial tolerance among white survey respondents? Methods. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey that comprises respondents across some 27 cities provides the data for this analysis. Ordered logit regression was utilized. Results. Independent of key explanations of racial tolerance such as racial threat and contact theories, creative class or new political culture cities are associated with more progressive racial attitudes among white respondents. In addition, important evidence is uncovered that shows creative class operates as an interactive variable, conditioning the effects of traditional determinants of tolerance. Conclusions. Evidence suggests that creative class or new political culture cities should be viewed as constituting distinctive cultural milieus that have important direct and interactive effects on tolerance attitudes.

This article focuses on city officials' actions when morality issues (gay rights, pornography regulations, etc.) are at stake. Cases drawn from a systematic sample of cities reveal a continuum of local officials' actions ranging from actions unfavorable to activists to evasion of the issue to actions favorable to activists. In order to account for this variation, hypotheses are developed that identify institutional arrangements, ideology of issue activists, and the community's cultural context as key explanatory concepts. Empirical tests show that (a) officials in cities with more developed counter-cultural elements handle morality issues differently than officials in cities where orthodox/traditional sub-cultural elements dominate, (b) narrower measures of community demand/preferences specific to particular kinds of incidents are less useful in predicting governmental action on these issues, (c) institutions (ward versus at-large council elections; mayor versus city manager executive) are important in mediating the expectations or pressures stemming from the local sub-culture, and (d) official actions vary considerably depending upon the ideological stance and degree of controversiality of issue activists, but this too is contingent on the mediating effects of institutional arrangements.

This article applies policy-centered theory to a study of the effect of county governments' social program activity on local political participation. The analysis shows that participants' exposure to heightened levels of means-tested and universal programs does have the contrasting consequences for local forms of civic engagement that have been found in studies of national-level participation. Moreover, the participation-dampening effect of means-tested programs trumps the mobilizing effects of universal programs. The analysis also extends policy-centered theory by showing that means-tested programs send demobilizing messages to a somewhat broader target population than policy-centered theory usually envisions.

The Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision upholding a condemnation of private property for economic development purposes sparked a wave of reform legislation in state legislatures. However, there is considerable variation in the extent to which state legislatures restricted the power of eminent domain. This article seeks to account for this variation. It tests hypotheses drawn from the literature on state responses to Supreme Court decisions and research on factors shaping state policy change in the wake of federal actions more generally. The results show support for an organized interests explanation, a need/scope of the problem explanation, and some elements of an explanation featuring institutional characteristics of the state legislature; there are mixed findings with respect to the role of public ideology.

Objective. Local government officials exhibit a variety of responses to morality issues involving \"decency\" (i.e., pornography, prostitution, sexually explicit businesses). The purpose of this research is to account for these differences. Methods. This research analyzes a subset of data from a larger study of morality policy making at the local level, that is, all cases of decision making on decency issues (e.g., pornography, prostitution, regulation of sexually explicit businesses, etc.) that occurred in the period 1994-2000 in 10 of the 52 largest cities in the United States. Results. In mayoral settings, decision making on decency cases is likely to evoke pro-decency action from officials when a high level of issue salience is combined with high levels of church adherence, low levels of women's political empowerment, low levels of fundamentalist religious attachment, and higher levels of per capita income. Officials in city manager settings act more favorably toward decency activists if (1) higher levels of salience combine with a lower prevalence of fundamentalist religious adherents and higher levels of per capita income or (2) there is an interaction of salience and low levels of female political empowerment and high unemployment. Conclusions. Although exploratory in nature, the results confirm conventional expectations concerning the importance of salience and the prevalence of church affiliation; the results are counterintuitive with respect to the prevalence of fundamentalist forces and the extent of female political empowerment.