Abstract
State and local governments develop a wide range of policies and programs to provide public services to local residents. Plentiful research has examined whether these policies or programs are effective in achieving intended outcomes such as leveraging economic development or improving social welfare. Yet, there are relatively fewer books focusing on the broader impact of the policies and programs and their effect on local citizen participation. In Does Local Government Matter: How Urban Policies Shape Civic Engagement, political science professor, Elaine B. Sharpe, fills in the research gap and applies a “policy-centered approach” to examine how policies and programs of local governments influence civic participation.
In the introduction chapter, the author introduces the policy-centered approach which focuses on the impacts of policies on politics, civic participation, and democracy. The policy-centered approach differs from the society-centered approach in that the latter option investigates how various social factors or contexts may influence policymaking and implementation. By contrast, the policy-centered approach treats policies and programs as the dependent variable and examines the impacts of policies and programs on policy or program recipients. Existing studies have shown that policy and program designs may influence the political power and political activities of the policy recipients. Yet, as the author suggests, these studies have focused on a limited number of policies and programs and are mainly concentrated on political participation such as voting in national elections. This research differs from existing studies by applying the policy-centered theory to analyze diverse policy contexts at the local government level, ranging from allocation policies, to those regarding redistribution and economic development. Furthermore, this book goes beyond examining the impact of policies on voting behaviors, and examines a broader range of civic engagement. Additionally, multiple sources of data are integrated to allow for an in-depth explanation about the impacts of policies and programs on civic engagement. The data comes from Putnam’s Social Capital Benchmark Community Survey, census data on local government spending, a content analysis of newspaper articles, the annual survey of local police departments conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, the survey of economic development practices by local governments conducted by the International City Management Association (ICMA) in 1999 and 2004, and in-depth case studies of the business development policies in Lawrence, Kansas.
The ensuing chapters examine how specific policies and programs influence local civic participation. Chapter 1 examines the impact of social welfare program designs at the county government. The author compares the impact of means-tested policy designs with that of universal programs. She finds that county government spending on universal social programs enhanced civic engagement for those who do not experience welfare. By contrast, county government spending on means-tested programs is negatively related with citizens’ civic engagement as a whole. Furthermore, participation in means-tested programs can “chill out” the positive impacts on civic engagement brought by participation in universal programs (p. 49). Sharpe’s research extends the policy-centered theory because her research suggests that the negative impact of government spending on means-tested programs not only applies to the policy recipients, but also extends to those who have fiends experiencing means-tested welfare programs. In other words, these findings can enrich the policy-centered theory by showing that social policies and programs may have important impacts on civic engagement. This is especially the case for those who have not experienced the programs and are less proximate to the policy or program than the welfare-experiencing individuals.
In chapter 2, the author investigates how city governments’ actions to empower neighborhoods or to respond to concerns in the neighborhoods may affect citizens’ involvement in neighborhood organizations. Surprisingly, the author finds that city governments’ favorable stances toward neighborhoods conversely related with citizens’ participation in neighborhood organizations. This unexpected finding might result from the free-rider behavior of citizens when the efforts made by a local government benefit local residents as a whole. To untangle this puzzle, the author adds the variable of trust in neighbors to the explanatory model and suggests that this diminishing effect occurs in citizens who have high trust in their neighbors, but does not apply to citizens who have low trust in their neighbors. In other words, citizens who trust their neighbors are likely to free ride off of the results of other’s efforts to engage in neighborhood organizations. Therefore, the author notes it is highly likely that these programs only attract more neighborhood activists rather than the majority of local residents because of the free-riding behavior of citizens.
Following the discussion on neighborhood participation, in Chapter 3, the author examines in depth the impacts of community policing on local civic engagement, trust in police, and neighborhood social capital. Community policing programs, neither mobilize citizens for civic engagement as those proponents of community policing expected, nor increase citizens’ trust in neighbors and police. The author attributes this finding to the several factors including the free-riding problem, and policy design elements that only include certain groups of citizens from the local community.
Chapters 4 and 5 shift the focus from discussing social programs to investigating the economic development activities by local governments. Local governments adopt various economic development strategies such as tax abatement and other subsidies to attract and retain business. To ensure that business complies with contracts and truly benefits the local community, there is a trend to add accountability controls to subsidy policies to make business more responsible. The author suggests that in small cities the combination of generous economic incentives and strict accountability control can encourage businesses to participate in policymaking and build corporate citizenship. To further understand the dynamic relationships between economic development policy change and business actions, the author conducted a case study of Lawrence in Kansas. The author notes that as the city of Lawrence reforms its subsidy policies by adding accountability controls, the local business community receives important messages about their worth to the community. These messages not only come from the policy change, but also come from the meeting procedure, discussions, and other parts of the policymaking process. Although negative messages might discourage businesses from starting or continuing their investment, negative messages also activated local businesses to take action and influence policymaking.
The final chapter summarizes the findings about how urban policies and programs influence local civic engagement. Spending on means-tested social programs may diminish civic engagement, especially for those who experienced the means-tested programs and also for those did not themselves but have friends who are welfare recipients. Neighborhood empowering activities and community policing can have unintended impacts on civic engagement. The author notes that her research extended the policy-centered theory because it showed that factors such as “visibility” and “proximity” are not sufficient to explain the policy feedback that generated from urban policies and programs. Certain programs that are not salient to the public can still exert impacts on civic engagement. Programs or policies may also have influence on the citizens who do not directly experience the programs.
This book makes several important contributions to the field. First, the author examines a crucial issue that has received relatively little attention in existing research. This book goes beyond examining whether policies can help address social problems and examines the broader impact of policies on civic engagement. Having examined various urban policies and programs, ranging from economic incentive polices to community policing programs, and social welfare programs, the author shows that certain policy design elements might result in unintended outcomes on citizen engagement. This research highlights the importance of careful policy designs and calls for greater research attention to policy feedback. Second, the author extends policy-centered research from analyzing federal programs to studying the policies and programs at local government levels. Finally, this book is very informative. The arguments are built upon the analysis of data from multiple sources. Such rich data allows the author to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the policy impacts on civic engagement and present a compelling analysis.
However, this book is not without limitations. It would help the reader if the author clarified the difference between the policy-centered approach from other types of policy analysis in the beginning of the book. Although the author successfully raises awareness of the broader impact of policies and programs on civic engagement in her conclusion, it falls short on providing practical policy recommendations. Doing so would not only make the book even more appealing to policy makers and public managers, but also help avoid unintended policy outcomes.