The Urban Shadow Bureaucracy: How Private Intermediaries Shape Public Discretion

• In Event: Democratic Institutions and the Law (Co-sponsored by Sociology of Law Section)

Abstract

For the last half century, sociologists have expressed interest and concern with the undemocratic privatization of urban governance. Where previous studies primarily highlight how private interests influence public policy, we focus on how private interests influence street-level urban governance, or the actions of local government bureaucrats. We observe this trend through an often invisible yet nearly ubiquitous group of urban actors: consultants. In an urban development context, consultants are third-party intermediaries who are hired by private actors to broker access to government services. We argue that these intermediaries act strategically to directly shape their macro-level environment by influencing the administrative state. Across two case studies focusing on distinct urban processes, we find that consultants are part of an ‘urban shadow bureaucracy’ that undermines public power in favor of private interests. In New Orleans, business owners and commercial developers typically hire consultants to manage complex and burdensome permitting processes. In this case, we draw on 64 interviews and observation of 123 public planning hearings. Consultants often try to tilt bureaucratic interpretations of the law in their favor, usually seeking to widen subjective technical definitions to accommodate further growth and development. In Los Angeles, real estate developers seeking public funds for subsidized affordable housing hire consultants to similarly widen technical definitions, but also to strategize around where and in what form to produce subsidized multifamily rental housing. In this case, we draw on 40 interviews and a dataset of two years of LIHTC development applications. The widespread use of consultants – often the same individuals and organizations from project to project – effectively limits innovation and public choice by shaping the menu of possibilities that bureaucrats have to choose from. Overall, while more visible political urban development dramas play out, consultants more quietly shape the actions of the urban administrative state, undermining public governance.

Authors

• AJ Golio, Tulane University

• Katherine L. Smock, University of California-Los Angeles