The Leftmost City

The Leftmost City PDF Author: Richard Gendron
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042997597X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Almost all US cities are controlled by real estate and development interests, but Santa Cruz, California, is a deviant case. An unusual coalition of socialist-feminists, environmentalists, social-welfare liberals, and neighborhood activists has stopped every growth project proposed by landowners and developers since 1969, and controlled the city council since 1981. Even after a 1989 earthquake forced the city to rebuild its entire downtown, the progressive elected officials prevailed over developers and landowners. Drawing on hundreds of primary documents, as well as original, previously unpublished interviews, The Leftmost City utilizes an extended case study of Santa Cruz to critique three major theories of urban power: Marxism, public-choice theory, and regime theory. Santa Cruz is presented within the context of other progressive attempts to shape city government, and the authors' findings support growth-coalition theory, which stresses the conflict between real estate interests and neighborhoods as the fundamental axis of urban politics. The authors conclude their analysis by applying insights gleaned from Santa Cruz to progressive movements nationwide, offering a template for progressive coalitions to effectively organize to achieve political power.

The Leftmost City

The Leftmost City PDF Author: Richard Gendron
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042997597X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
Almost all US cities are controlled by real estate and development interests, but Santa Cruz, California, is a deviant case. An unusual coalition of socialist-feminists, environmentalists, social-welfare liberals, and neighborhood activists has stopped every growth project proposed by landowners and developers since 1969, and controlled the city council since 1981. Even after a 1989 earthquake forced the city to rebuild its entire downtown, the progressive elected officials prevailed over developers and landowners. Drawing on hundreds of primary documents, as well as original, previously unpublished interviews, The Leftmost City utilizes an extended case study of Santa Cruz to critique three major theories of urban power: Marxism, public-choice theory, and regime theory. Santa Cruz is presented within the context of other progressive attempts to shape city government, and the authors' findings support growth-coalition theory, which stresses the conflict between real estate interests and neighborhoods as the fundamental axis of urban politics. The authors conclude their analysis by applying insights gleaned from Santa Cruz to progressive movements nationwide, offering a template for progressive coalitions to effectively organize to achieve political power.

LEFTMOST CITY

LEFTMOST CITY PDF Author: RICHARD. GENDRON
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367097189
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


Studying the Power Elite

Studying the Power Elite PDF Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351588613
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book critiques and extends the analysis of power in the classic, Who Rules America?, on the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication in 1967—and through its subsequent editions. The chapters, written especially for this book by twelve sociologists and political scientists, provide fresh insights and new findings on many contemporary topics, among them the concerted attempt to privatize public schools; foreign policy and the growing role of the military-industrial component of the power elite; the successes and failures of union challenges to the power elite; the ongoing and increasingly global battles of a major sector of agribusiness; and the surprising details of how those who hold to the egalitarian values of social democracy were able to tip the scales in a bitter conflict within the power elite itself on a crucial banking reform in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These social scientists thereby point the way forward in the study of power, not just in the United States, but globally. A brief introductory chapter situates Who Rules America? within the context of the most visible theories of power over the past fifty years—pluralism, Marxism, Millsian elite theory, and historical institutionalism. Then, a chapter by G. William Domhoff, the author of Who Rules America?, takes us behind the scenes on how the original version was researched and written, tracing the evolution of the book in terms of new concepts and research discoveries by Domhoff himself, as well as many other power structure researchers, through the 2014 seventh edition. Readers will find differences of opinion and analysis from chapter to chapter. The authors were encouraged to express their views independently and frankly. They do so in an admirable and useful fashion that will stimulate everyone’s thinking on these difficult and complex issues, setting the agenda for future studies of power.

Myth of Liberal Ascendancy

Myth of Liberal Ascendancy PDF Author: G. Williams Domhoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131725581X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Based on new archival research, G. Williams Domhoff challenges popular conceptions of the 1930's New Deal. Arguing instead that this period was one of increasing corporate dominance in government affairs, affecting the fate of American workers up to the present day. While FDR's New Deal brought sweeping legislation, the tide turned quickly after 1938. From that year onward nearly every major new economic law passed by Congress showed the mark of corporate dominance. Domhoff accessibly portrays documents of the Committee's vital influence in the halls of government, supported by his interviews with several of its key employees and trustees. Domhoff concludes that in terms of economic influence, liberalism was on a long steady decline, despite two decades of post-war growing equality, and that ironically, it was the successes of the civil rights, feminist, environmental, and gay-lesbian movements-not a new corporate mobilisation-that led to the final defeat of the liberal-labour alliance after 1968.

Who Rules America Now?

Who Rules America Now? PDF Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The author is convinced that there is a ruling class in America today. He examines the American power structure as it has developed in the 1980s. He presents systematic, empirical evidence that a fixed group of privileged people dominates the American economy and government. The book demonstrates that an upper class comprising only one-half of one percent of the population occupies key positions within the corporate community. It shows how leaders within this "power elite" reach government and dominate it through processes of special-interest lobbying, policy planning and candidate selection. It is written not to promote any political ideology, but to analyze our society with accuracy.

Class, Populism, and Progressive Politics

Class, Populism, and Progressive Politics PDF Author: Mike Rotkin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Santa Cruz (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 944

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Book Description


The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics

The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics PDF Author: Donald L. Rosdil
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136287825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Why do some U.S. cities like Seattle and Boston impose social exactions and sustainability targets on private investment while others like Las Vegas and Houston offer property tax and fee remissions to business, tolerate environmentally hazardous activities such as oil drilling, and express skepticism even about recycling mandates? The behavior of the former cities appears especially puzzling in view of globalization processes that seemingly offer many more options to mobile capital and expose cities’ vulnerability to private investment decisions. Cultural Contradictions examines the paradoxical finding that some U.S. cities can impose burdensome regulations and extract social and environmental contributions from the private sector despite an apparently weak bargaining position. It usescultural change and the growth of non-traditional subcultures to explain why cities adopt these progressive policies. Responding to the urban policy literature’s tendency to prioritize economic considerations over other kinds of causal factors, the book demonstrates the joint impact of culture and economics in encouraging policy outcomes which emphasize social justice, human rights, and environmental sustainability in large U.S. cities. The book makes several specific contributions to urban literature. First, it argues that cities in which nontraditional cultural beliefs and practices thrive and which are strongly linked to dynamic economic sectors such as information services, professional, scientific and technical services, financial services, and education and health care services are especially likely to adopt progressive policies. It establishes this claim using both statistical analysis of large-N city samples and a closer investigation of four case studies. Second, it reveals how progressive policies are a plausible response to psychological concerns associated with unconventional ways of life and the nature of postindustrial society. Finally, the book indicates how these new ways of life and postindustrial economic sectors grow in mutually reinforcing ways in order to make these policies acceptable to local economic elites and therefore favorable to the city’s future development.

The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century

The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367252021
Category : Corporations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book demonstrates exactly how the corporate rich developed and implemented the policies and government structures that allowed them to dominate America in the 20th-century. Written with unparalleled insight, Domhoff offers a remarkable look into the nature of power during a pivotal time, with added significance for the current era.

The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West

The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West PDF Author: Mike Douglass
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 981130209X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book explores the leading role that cities can play in shaping progressive policies in collaboration with various stakeholders. It examines the timing of such shifts to progressivity in cities, the interactions that enable progressive actions to be developed and sustained, and the challenges and constraints facing progressive cities. The book approaches the themes using an array of methods to investigate how progressive city governments emerge, what constitutes a “progressive city” in terms of governance institutions, processes and outcomes and whether progressive cities are destined to be ephemeral or if they can be sustained over time. With its focus on the emerging role of local governments in shaping city futures, this book is useful for students, academics, government official and policy makers interested in geography, sociology, urban planning, public policy, political economy, social movements, participatory democracy and Asian and European studies.

Activists in City Hall

Activists in City Hall PDF Author: Pierre Clavel
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460115
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In 1983, Boston and Chicago elected progressive mayors with deep roots among community activists. Taking office as the Reagan administration was withdrawing federal aid from local governments, Boston's Raymond Flynn and Chicago's Harold Washington implemented major policies that would outlast them. More than reforming governments, they changed the substance of what the government was trying to do: above all, to effect a measure of redistribution of resources to the cities' poor and working classes and away from hollow goals of "growth" as measured by the accumulation of skyscrapers. In Boston, Flynn moderated an office development boom while securing millions of dollars for affordable housing. In Chicago, Washington implemented concrete measures to save manufacturing jobs, against the tide of national policy and trends. Activists in City Hall examines how both mayors achieved their objectives by incorporating neighborhood activists as a new organizational force in devising, debating, implementing, and shaping policy. Based in extensive archival research enriched by details and insights gleaned from hours of interviews with key figures in each administration and each city's activist community, Pierre Clavel argues that key to the success of each mayor were numerous factors: productive contacts between city hall and neighborhood activists, strong social bases for their agendas, administrative innovations, and alternative visions of the city. Comparing the experiences of Boston and Chicago with those of other contemporary progressive cities-Hartford, Berkeley, Madison, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Burlington, and San Francisco-Activists in City Hall provides a new account of progressive urban politics during the Reagan era and offers many valuable lessons for policymakers, city planners, and progressive political activists.