Urban Citizenship and American Democracy

Urban Citizenship and American Democracy PDF Author: Amy Bridges
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143846102X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Examines city politics and policy, federalism, and democracy in the United States. After decades of being defined by crisis and limitations, cities are popular again—as destinations for people and businesses, and as subjects of scholarly study. Urban Citizenship and American Democracy contributes to this new scholarship by exploring the origins and dynamics of urban citizenship in the United States. Written by both urban and nonurban scholars using a variety of methodological approaches, the book examines urban citizenship within particular historical, social, and policy contexts, including issues of political participation, public school engagement, and crime policy development. Contributors focus on enduring questions about urban political power, local government, and civic engagement to offer fresh theoretical and empirical accounts of city politics and policy, federalism, and American democracy. Amy Bridges is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and the author of Democratic Beginnings: Founding the Western States; Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest; and A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics. Michael Javen Fortner is Assistant Professor and Academic Director of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, Murphy Institute. He is the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment.

Urban Citizenship and American Democracy

Urban Citizenship and American Democracy PDF Author: Amy Bridges
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143846102X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
Examines city politics and policy, federalism, and democracy in the United States. After decades of being defined by crisis and limitations, cities are popular again—as destinations for people and businesses, and as subjects of scholarly study. Urban Citizenship and American Democracy contributes to this new scholarship by exploring the origins and dynamics of urban citizenship in the United States. Written by both urban and nonurban scholars using a variety of methodological approaches, the book examines urban citizenship within particular historical, social, and policy contexts, including issues of political participation, public school engagement, and crime policy development. Contributors focus on enduring questions about urban political power, local government, and civic engagement to offer fresh theoretical and empirical accounts of city politics and policy, federalism, and American democracy. Amy Bridges is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and the author of Democratic Beginnings: Founding the Western States; Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest; and A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics. Michael Javen Fortner is Assistant Professor and Academic Director of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, Murphy Institute. He is the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment.

The Rebirth of Urban Democracy

The Rebirth of Urban Democracy PDF Author: Kent E. Portney
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815723660
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In an era when government seems remote and difficult to approach, participatory democracy may seem a hopelessly romantic notion. Yet nothing is more crucial to the future of American democracy than to develop some way of spurring greater citizen participation. In this important book, Jeffrey Berry, Ken Portney, and Ken Thompson examine cities that have created systems of neighborhood government and incorporated citizens in public policymaking. Through careful research and analysis, the authors find that neighborhood based participation is the key to revitalizing American democracy. The Rebirth of Urban Democracy provides a thorough examination of five cities with strong citizen participation programs--Birmingham, Dayton, Portland, St. Paul, and San Antonio. In each city, the authors explore whether neighborhood associations encourage more people to participate; whether these associations are able to promote policy responsiveness on the art of local governments; and whether participation in these associations increases the capacity of people to take part in government. Finally, the authors outline the steps that can be taken to increase political participation in urban America. Berry, Portney, and Thomson show that citizens in participatory programs are able to get their issues on the public agenda and develop a stronger sense of community, greater trust in government officials, and more confidence in the political system. From a rigorous evaluation of surveys and interviews with thousands of citizens and policymakers, the authors also find that central governments in these cities are highly responsive to their neighborhoods and that less conflict exists among citizens and policymakers. The authors assert that these programs can provide a blueprint for major reform in cities across the country. They outline the components for successful participation programs and offer recommendations for those who want to get involved. They demonstrate that participatio

Community as the Material Basis of Citizenship

Community as the Material Basis of Citizenship PDF Author: Rodolfo Rosales
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351624172
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Community as the Material Basis of Citizenship addresses community as the site of participation, production, and rights of citizens and brings to bear a profound critique of a collective process that has historically excluded working class communities and communities of color from any real governance. The argument is that the status of citizenship has been influenced by a society that emphasizes the role of property in defining legitimacy and power and therefore idealizes and institutionalizes citizenship from an individualistic perspective. This system puts the onus on the individual citizen to participate in their governance, while the political reality is that organizations and corporations and their interests have great power to influence and govern. The chapters present an exciting departure from the long-standing traditions of the social basis of citizenship. In Community as the Material Basis of Citizenship, Rodolfo Rosales and his contributors argue that citizenship is a communally embedded and/or socially constituted phenomenon. Hence, the unfinished story of American Democracy is not in the equalization of communities but rather in their ability to participate in their own governance – in their empowerment.

Arresting Citizenship

Arresting Citizenship PDF Author: Amy E. Lerman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022613797X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens. A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.

Introduction to American Democracy and Citizenship

Introduction to American Democracy and Citizenship PDF Author:
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781631891564
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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American Democracy and Citizenship

American Democracy and Citizenship PDF Author: Mark Ellickson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781793511379
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Sustainable Cities in American Democracy

Sustainable Cities in American Democracy PDF Author: Carmen Sirianni
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 070062998X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
We face two global threats: the climate crisis and a crisis of democracy. Located at the crux of these crises, sustainable cities build on the foundations and resources of democracy to make our increasingly urban world more resilient and just. Sustainable Cities in American Democracy focuses on this effort as it emerged and developed over the past decades in the institutional field of sustainable cities—a vital response to environmental degradation and climate change that is shaped by civic and democratic action. Carmen Sirianni shows how various kinds of civic associations and grassroots mobilizing figure in this story, especially as they began to explicitly link conservation to the future of our democracy and then develop sustainable cities as a democratic project. These organizations are national, local, or multitiered, from the League of Women Voters to the Natural Resources Defense Council to bicycle and watershed associations. Some challenge city government agencies contentiously, while others seek collaboration; many do both at some point. Sirianni uses a range of analytic approaches—from scholarly disciplines, policy design, urban governance, social movements, democratic theory, public administration, and planning—to understand how such diverse civic and professional associations have come to be both an ecology of organizations and a systemic and coherent project. The institutional field of sustainable cities has emerged with some core democratic norms and civic practices but also with many tensions and trade-offs that must be crafted and revised strategically in the face of new opportunities and persistent shortfalls. Sirianni’s account draws ambitious yet pragmatic and hopeful lessons for a “Civic Green New Deal”—a policy design for building sustainable and resilient cities on much more robust foundations in the decades ahead while also addressing democratic deficits in our polarized political culture.

Introduction to American Democracy and Citizenship

Introduction to American Democracy and Citizenship PDF Author: Mark Ellickson
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781621316497
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Remaking Urban Citizenship

Remaking Urban Citizenship PDF Author: Andrew M. Greeley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351493590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Due to heightened global migration and transnational mobility, many residents of the world's cities lack national citizenship in the places to which they have moved for work, refuge, or retirement. The disjuncture between citizenship and daily life has led to devolution of claims from national to urban space. Within nation-states characterized by structured inequalities, citizens have not reduced their social differences. This leads increasingly to calls for greater direct involvement of marginalized classes in reshaping the institutions and spaces directly affecting their lives.These concerns—cities without citizenship and people without political power—inform the agendas of organizations that seek to restructure urban citizenship in more democratic directions. Remaking Urban Citizenship focuses on the uses and limits of such political organizations and coalitions, shows the various ways they pursue expanded rights within the city, and describes the institutional changes necessary to empower global migrants and popular classes as urban citizens.Offering individual or comparative case studies of cities in the United States, Europe, and China, contributions to this volume describe the development of actual practices of organizations working to reinvigorate citizenship at the urban scale. Collectively, they locate institutional forms that help migrants lay claim to their cities, show how migrants can become politically empowered, and identify how they can expand their rights or find other ways to belong.

Learn about the United States

Learn about the United States PDF Author: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160831188
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
"Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.