Political activity by city residents geared towards local issues has shown tremendous variation in recent times. Citizens in some cities have had high levels of participation in both municipal elections and in social movements, while residents of other cities are largely demobilized. In this project, I will explore how levels and forms of political participation result from the interaction of pushes and pulls from above and below, structured by the rules and incentives that have been formally and informally institutionalized within a city. Particular attention will be paid to the various ways that demobilized groups become engaged in Central questions to be explored in this dissertation are: How can we explain variation in levels of political participation across cities? How can we explain political participation variation within cities across time and across different racial, economic, and geographic groups? Why do certain coalitions arise in some cities and not in others? How are groups mobilized either in opposition to or in support of the dominant coalition? How do mobilized groups become demobilized? Besides questions about the level of participation, I will also examine questions about other types of political behavior: What explains the variation in types of political behavior across cities and across time within the same city? When is mobilization expressed in partisan organizations as opposed to community or ethnic groups? What counts as political participation? When do mobilized constituencies enter the electoral arena? When do residents resort to more contentious means of participation, such as rioting? This project will use two complementary methods to explore the dynamics of political participation in cities. The first phase of the research will consist of a time-series cross-sectional analysis of electoral participation in 38 US cities over 40 years from 1960-2000. The second phase comparative historical analysis using archival materials, newspaper accounts, and exit poll interview data on four case study cities: New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston. This project will make a contribution to sociology and the study of urban electoral politics by expanding upon available electoral data for these cities, by examining other types of political participation, including community organizations, social movements, and incidents of contention, such as riots, and by elaborating more fully on the processes and mechanisms shaping citizen political participation in cities.
