Community Development, Civic Ecology, & Urban Democracy

• In Event: Citizen Participation and Partnership in Urban Politics

Abstract

Local community development systems play a key role in shaping local democracy (Emejulu, 2016; Ledwith, 2020). This project focuses on the nuances of public leadership and local politics through a community development system lens. Our motivating research questions are: Why do community development systems vary across local contexts? How does the local socio-political context and policy history shape the local community development system, with a specific focus on local democratic practices?
Local community development systems are made up of formal and informal organizational types, including high-capacity nonprofits, neighborhood associations, foundations, and, of particular importance to this analysis, community-based organizations [CBO]. We are particularly interested in the role of 1. Local public sector actors; 2. Philanthropic actors, be they major donors or foundations; 3. State and federal policymakers; and 4. Community-based organizations (CBOs).
CBOs are historically important sites of economic empowerment, political mobilization, and civic engagement. Yet, there is great variation in how CBOs engage in local politics and shape local democracy. How they engage is shaped by both local context and changing economic, political, and social conditions (Orr, 2007). CBOs can be important sites of constituent politicization (LeRoux, 2011, see also Han, 2009). As nonprofit, place-based organizations, serving an important intermediary role between the needs and desires of community residents and the goals and objectives of the public and private sector, they can also function as “political machines,” creating a reliable voting block of service recipients for local elected officials (Marwell, 2004). On the contrary, many CBOs, eschew “politics” and instead adopt a business-like, “professionalized” approach (Stoecker, 1996), often motivated by coercive pressures emanating within the community development system (e.g. funding) (see also Skocpol, 1999; Orr, 2007).
This project has two main foci. First, borrowing from the community development system (e.g. Stoutland, 1999) and civic ecology (e.g. Orr, 2007) frameworks, we posit that CBO political engagement is contingent on the history of local community development systems, and on how local institutional actors within the community development system align and respond to social, economic, and political change over time. Second, we build on radical community development (e.g. Ledwith, 2020) to argue that changing local contexts, especially in the context of changing conceptions of power (power-within, power-to, and power-with, e.g. Gaventa, 2006), shapes how CBO actors make meaning of their political engagement efforts within the community development system and their role in fostering local democracy.
Using a comparative case study (Yin, 2009; Simmons & Smith, 2017), we will illuminate the processes and pathways through which local actors interact to shape local democracy across contexts. The cases represent three locations with variation in social, economic and political institutional arrangements: Cleveland, OH; Little Rock, AR; and Seattle, WA.

Authors

• Ashley E. Nickels, Kent State University

• Zachary David Wood, Seattle University