Nonelected Neighborhood Representatives: Community-Based Organizations and the Political Representation of the Urban Poor

• In Event: 131 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. Inequality and Representation

Abstract

In an era of public-private partnerships, what role do nonprofit community-based organizations (CBOs) play in urban governance? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Boston, this article presents a new conceptualization of CBOs’ political role in disadvantaged neighborhoods: CBOs as nonelected neighborhood representatives. For four years, I followed nine CBOs in six Boston neighborhoods as they planned community development projects. The CBOs in my study claimed to represent geographic districts as they avoided electoral politics and negotiated directly with government executives and funders. Other actors in the community development field legitimated CBOs’ claims and treated them as the preferred representatives of neighborhoods’ interests. Elected district representatives, by contrast, exhibited limited influence over resources and were rarely involved in community development decision-making. By reconsidering CBOs’ political role in urban neighborhoods, this study uncovers a consequential realignment of urban political representation. It also identifies an important tradeoff between the urban poor’s access to resources and the ability to hold their leaders democratically accountable—a tradeoff that will remain so long as governments continue to rely on private actors in public governance.

Author

• Jeremy R. Levine, Harvard University