Analyzing Urban Politics: A Mobilization–Governance Framework

Race and Urban Politics: A Fresh Look

Students of urban politics have long recognized that economic forces have a powerful influence over how cities are governed. Some even posit an essentially determinative role for the market in structuring local policymaking (Harvey 1985; Peterson 1981), although many others have concluded that while the economy imposes significant constraints on the choices of policymakers, cities retain considerable autonomy in deciding how to manage their affairs and plan for their futures (Savitch and Kantor 2002; Stone and Sanders 1987; Swanstrom 1988). One might say that a near consensus developed among urban political scientists in support of a political–economy framework that explores the interplay of the state and market in shaping urban politics and that that framework has prevailed for several decades. However, the consensus (or near consensus) has shown signs of wear and tear in recent years.

There has been a growing sense among urbanists that race has been underestimated as a core analytical tool. In 2009, J. Phillip Thompson wrote, “Many classic studies in urban politics discuss race, yet race has not been theoretically central to the field of urban politics” (p. 186). For Thompson and other critics (c.f. Seamster 2015), research that examines the attitudes and behavior of racially identified actors to attain influence within the political system (c.f. Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Sonenshein 1993) fails to reveal the root causes of persistent racial inequality. A more thorough and critical analysis of race in urban politics would interrogate how racism is embedded within structures and cultures of power and governance.

Other scholars strongly support Thompson’s point. Michelle Alexander’s (2010) path-breaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, ignited a burst of scholarship on the destructive racial impacts on individuals, neighborhoods, and cities caused by the nation’s adoption of a harshly punitive approach to crime control. The targeting of communities of color for intensified surveillance, police stops, and arrests has led to the disproportionate imprisonment of young African-Americans and Latinos and exacted wrenching social and economic costs (Gottschalk 2015; Murakawa 2014). The political consequences of the carceral state have also been far-reaching. Millions have been stripped of voting rights under draconian felon disenfranchisement laws. Millions more who have been subjected to the criminal justice system, either directly or indirectly, have come to see government as a deeply racist institution incapable of serving as a vehicle for improving societal conditions (Cohen 2010). Accordingly, civic and political engagement in communities exposed to punitive policing has substantially diminished, with inevitable consequences for who wields power in American cities (Burch 2013; Lerman and Weaver 2014).

Clarence Stone (2017), the leading proponent of a political–economy approach that has dominated the study of urban politics over the past four decades, recently acknowledged that the long-time focus on economic forces has been “incomplete as a source of explanation for urban distress” (p. 4) and understanding urban power dynamics in cities. Indeed, he views the wave of scholarship on the carceral state as the centerpiece of a new paradigm of urban politics in which the imperative of order maintenance serves as a form of social and political control that constrains voices of discontent and fuels the demobilization of people of color. That imperative, Stone concludes, has “profoundly reshape[d] the politics of cities” (p. 7).

The argument that the full analytical power of race in understanding and explaining urban politics has for too long been undervalued is impossible to deny. ¹ The attention it has garnered during the past several years is a testament to the excitement that many scholars feel about future research. However, how far do we wish to go in this direction? Should race become the primary analytical tool for studying power and politics in American cities? Should an analytical framework based on race displace the political–economy framework that has prevailed since the 1980s when it supplanted the community power framework?

Political Economy and Urban Politics: Still Relevant?

As excited as I am about this long overdue regard for race as a fundamental concept in accounting for urban power relations and the fresh insights that this new approach has already generated, I am mindful of what may be lost if, as a result of this paradigmatic shift, we begin to slight the ongoing significance of political economy influencing local politics. ² Few of us need to be reminded that we have been living in an era of mounting economic inequality in the United States at least since the 1980s (Bartels 2008; Winters and Page 2009) and that economic inequality is particularly acute within our cities and metropolitan areas (Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2014).

Perhaps we should think of these paradigms—race and political economy—as separate and distinct, but both essential in elucidating urban politics, much like international relations theory with its three leading theoretical paradigms of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, which have coexisted productively for many years. Alternatively, we might think about ways to integrate race and political economy into a new analytical framework. Of course, I am not the first to contemplate this. Although race has arguably been underappreciated as a central analytical mechanism, some scholars have advocated raising its visibility while maintaining a comparable focus on economic forces and social class. In 2002, Cynthia Horan in her article, “Racializing Urban Regimes,” asked, “Why not posit regimes as three-way relationships shaped by the state, economy, and race?” (p. 11). ³

Given the strong and appropriate interest that a race-based analytical framework is attracting, some may wonder why I am advocating retention of a political–economy framework as part of a new approach to thinking about urban politics. Indeed, one could make a case that economic forces apply less pressure on urban policy makers today than they did a few decades ago. With globalization and the ever-increasing mobility of capital, business interests are less connected to particular cities and thus less motivated to intervene in local affairs. Consequently, organized business advocacy has diminished in recent years (Hanson et al. 2010; Strom 2008). ⁴

Nevertheless, massive societal forces such as globalization do not necessarily point in the same political direction. While rising capital mobility may reduce organized business clout in city politics, it may simultaneously expand the leverage that business exerts over local policymaking (Mollenkopf 1992). The structural advantage that capital enjoys in market-oriented political systems is just one reason why it may be premature to discount business influence in urban politics. Business elites also hold additional advantages vis-à-vis other interest groups. This terrain was insightfully explored over four decades ago by Charles Lindblom in his landmark work, Politics and Markets: The World’s Politcal-economic Systems (1977). Given that book’s influence on subsequent urban politics scholarship, and its continuing relevance, it is worth revisiting.

Lindblom contended that business occupies a unique position compared with all other interest groups in its relationship to the state. Policymakers understand that business leaders make critical decisions about levels of production, the deployment of labor, the distribution of income, investment in technology, and the location of plants—all of which are inexorably bound up with the public welfare. Accordingly, the policy requests of business are given heightened attention:

In the eyes of government officials, therefore, businessmen do not appear simply as the representatives of a special interest, as representatives of interest groups do. They appear as functionaries performing functions that government officials regard as indispensable. When a government official asks himself whether business needs a tax reduction, he knows he is asking a question about the welfare of the whole society and not simply about a favor to a segment of the population, which is typically at stake when he asks himself whether he should respond to an interest group. (p. 173)

With so much at stake, business leaders and government officials develop “a multitude of common tacit understandings . . . with respect to the conditions under which enterprises can or cannot profitably operate” (p. 179). Policymakers do not have to be “bribed, duped, or pressured” (p. 173) to induce business performance. They “simply understand that collaboration with the business sector is an essential element of governance within a market-oriented system” (p. 173). This inclination to collaborate with business to promote a vibrant economy means that business enjoys “a privileged position” within the political sphere (p. 179).

That privileged position does not mean that business is free to recuse itself from the hurly-burly of interest group and electoral politics. Although it need not be concerned about major challenges to its hegemony within the political and economic sectors, business mobilization to influence policy making is a matter of routine. In this realm, Lindblom asserts that business’s structural edge in relation to all other interest groups is further enhanced by its superior resources, imposing organizational strength, and unparalleled access to government, a competitive advantage that some political scientists maintain has only expanded over time (Drutman 2015; Hacker and Pierson 2010).

Finally, Lindblom proposed yet another source of political clout for business in addition to its material advantages in lobbying policymakers and the natural predisposition of public officials to favor policies to induce business performance:

But now suppose that business influence strikes deeper . . . Consider the possibility that businessmen achieve an indoctrination of citizens so that citizens’ volitions serve not their own interests but the interests of businessmen. The privileged position of business comes to be widely recognized. (p. 202)

The precise mechanisms by which business comes to shape the perceptions of the citizenry remain murky, but evidence abounds of working-class voters opposing initiatives that would engender a more equitable distribution of wealth and power. As Lindblom noted, “It is one of the world’s most extraordinary phenomena that masses of voters vote very much like their elites. They demand very little for themselves” (p. 209). This correlation between the political attitudes and beliefs of much of the working class and business has persisted in the intervening years (Frank 2004; Williams 2017). ⁵

Regime theory builds on many of Lindblom’s insights in thinking about politics within American cities. In City and Regime in the American Republic, Stephen Elkin (1987) argued that city officials are under constant pressure to demonstrate their determination to promote economic growth by embracing fiscally conservative policies; deviating from that norm risks saddling the city with “a reputation for being antibusiness,” inhibiting new investment, and courting financial disaster (pp. 31–32). Elkin proceeds to explain how the institutional context of city government further entrenches the “systemic bias” in favor of inducing business performance by privileging elite control over urban development and discouraging public engagement in decision-making processes. At the same time, Elkin cautions against interpreting urban politics as simply a one-sided exercise of power by business interests. Government officials retain their own significant sources of authority and an ability to make their own choices. However, these choices are constrained by “structural features that define the city’s political economy,” including the competition to attract and retain capital investment and the need to generate funds in private credit markets. As a result, “city officials will naturally gravitate toward an alliance with businessmen, particularly land interests, and such an alliance will naturally be devoted to creating institutional arrangements that will facilitate investments in the city” (p. 42).

The seminal work in regime theory is Clarence Stone’s Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988 (1989). Like Lindblom and Elkin before him, Stone sees a fundamental division between governmental institutions that are subjected to some measure of popular control and an economy in which the investment decisions of private actors bring to bear substantial influence over policymaking. The state–market cleavage thus remains the defining feature of urban politics. But unlike Lindblom and Elkin, Stone does not then spell out the many advantages of business within the political realm. Instead, he emphasizes the fragmented environment created by the state-market divide and how that divide poses a challenge for effective governance. He proceeds to point out that fragmented authority also establishes an incentive for various groups within the public and private sectors to find ways to cooperate to advance their respective agendas. The goal is not simply to create temporary alliances to secure immediate victories in the policy arena; rather, groups come together with the aim of developing stable relationships capable of attaining long-term goals. Cooperation is the key to success. In theory, the resulting governing coalition, or regime, may be composed of many different combinations of public- and private-sector groups, a fact that potentially bestows on city government considerable autonomy to pursue myriad objectives. In practice, however, city officials discover that coalitions with groups with electoral clout or intensely held preferences do not necessarily yield progress in realizing policy goals in the context of a diffuse political environment. Rather, they come to appreciate the value of reaching out to groups within the private sector that possess sufficient resources to get things done. Business interests, with their impressive stockpile of material and organizational resources, often come to hold a central, even dominant, position within the regime. In the end, the structural advantages enjoyed by business leaders due to their control over investment decisions in a market economy, along with the resources they are able to bring to a governing coalition to pursue challenging agendas, gives the business community an upper hand in urban politics.

Regime Politics provides a compelling explanation for why certain groups within the public and private sectors coalesce into governing coalitions or regimes in support of a common agenda, an explanation that emphasizes the role of resources, organizational cohesion, and mechanisms of cooperation based on the shrewd deployment of selective incentives and small opportunities. Firmly grounded within a political–economy framework, regime theory directs our attention away from the formal institutions of government such as elections and toward the subtle ways in which power is applied behind the scenes among groups with the resources and organizational capacity to make progress in a context of fragmented authority. Regime theory’s focus on the notion of “power to,” as opposed to “power over,” is a distinctive contribution to theories of urban politics (Mossberger 2009). Moreover, at a time when scholars from various ideological and theoretical perspectives were stressing the seemingly all-consuming nature of market forces and the lack of political autonomy of city governments (c.f. Harvey 1985; Peterson 1981), regime theory proclaimed that urban politics does matter and that cities are governable.

There have been challenges to regime theory. Although regime theory promises to offer an alternative to theories that view urban politics as severely limited, practical applications raise questions about just how much political autonomy exists (Mossberger 2009). How do regimes impelled by a social justice agenda come into being and survive (Davies 2002)? Others note the static nature of regime theory, which elaborates how regimes endure over time, but devotes much less attention to how they change (c.f. Imbroscio 1998; Stoker 1995). And what about race? To what extent does race explain underlying structures and cultures within local politics?

A Synthesis

So, is there a way to preserve what has been valuable about regime theory with its foundational political–economy framework while responding to some of the theoretical challenges, including the reasonable insistence that race be accorded a more prominent role in any revised analytical framework? This section considers notable gaps in regime analysis, in particular its slighting of politics at the grassroots as a necessary element in accounting for why some groups but not others wind up in positions of power. It relies on race-centric scholarship to illuminate how both material and cultural factors function in various processes of mobilization and demobilization. In more recent years, Stone has turned his attention to the politics of neighborhood revitalization, but even here, the analysis remains problematically skewed toward elite actors at the expense of “marginal” groups. The section concludes, however, by recognizing aspects of regime theory, especially at the level of governance, that remain essential for understanding local power relations.

The Mobilization–Governance Framework

The mobilization–governance framework for analyzing urban politics consists of two phases, a mobilization phase (see Figure 1) and a governance phase (see Figure 2). It begins by being attentive to the impact of sweeping, societal changes such as industrialization, mass urbanization, deindustrialization, suburbanization, technological innovation, immigration, and globalization on cities and city politics. The framework views such sweeping changes as a potential catalyst for political change. Many theories of social movement emergence or, in the realm of urban politics, regime transformation, also emphasize the catalytic role of broad shifts in society (c.f. McAdam 1999; Orr and Stoker 1994).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Mobilization Phase of the Mobilization-Governance Framework.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Governance Phase of the Mobilization-Governance Framework.

However, large-scale societal change is mediated by prevailing structures and political cultures within any urban environment. As the recent wave of carceral state scholarship makes clear, race must be seen as a paramount force in shaping political mobilization. To start, deep-seated racism that has long pervaded any city’s social, economic, cultural, and political institutions results in racially segregated neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools that, in turn, constrain opportunities for collective action. Racial isolation tends to restrict the development of resources and organizations needed to initiate and sustain grassroots organizing. Moreover, racialized policies at all levels of government reinforce the tendency toward demobilization. The aggressive turn toward punitive policing and sentencing starting in the 1970s yielded incarceration rates that exceed those of virtually all other nations, with communities of color bearing the brunt of that crackdown. The adverse consequences within Black and Brown neighborhoods have been well-documented (Alexander 2010; Gottschalk 2015). Numerous other policies at the national, state, and local levels have had similarly disproportionate racial impacts (Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2014; Hirsch 1983), further undermining the material foundation for effective protest. Entrenched racism also exacts costs with respect to local political cultures. Again, the carceral state literature is instructive. Victims of a racist criminal justice system come to perceive the state as an engine of oppression as opposed to a vehicle for enhancing social justice (Cohen 2010). Participation in a political system that is ruining individuals, families, and communities does not make sense. In such a cultural milieu, the prospects for meaningful change through the political process appear dim at best.

While race structures urban politics in ways that typically inhibit widespread civic and political engagement, this is not always the outcome. White racism may also foment mass-based protest, as well as more conventional forms of political behavior. Piven and Cloward (1979) demonstrated how the rigid racial segregation caused by Jim Crow laws in the South resulted in generations of terror and oppression but simultaneously nurtured self-contained communities with steadily expanding community-based institutions. Black churches, colleges, newspapers, and labor unions provided an organizational nucleus for citizens to come together, reflect on existing conditions, and take steps to bring about political change. In this way, racist structures laid a groundwork for what became the civil rights movement (see also, Morris 1984). In addition, racialized policies that repress entire populations may eventually ignite rebellion, just as the many years of punitive policing and prosecution have sparked extensive activism in the form of the Black Lives Matter movement (Lowery 2016).

Race is not the only structure that either limits or facilitates political mobilization within cities. Scholars working within a political–economy framework have long understood that market forces exert far-reaching influence on state action and, by extension, the behavior of individuals and groups within urban areas. ¹¹ As Lindblom (1977) observed, business interests hold a “privileged position” in the political economy of market-based democracies because of their control over material resources, access to policymakers, and ability to move around and invest where conditions are most favorable, as well as a political culture that inclines public officials and citizens alike to view business interests as reasonable, necessary, or inevitable. Other urban groups with an interest in promoting capital investment—building trades unions, for instance—come together in political coalitions that further augment the business advantages in local politics (Logan and Molotch 1987). The structural bias generated by market forces is particularly pronounced when urban economies are struggling, an all-too-common condition in the wake of the wholesale deindustrialization and suburbanization that debilitated most U.S. cities during the latter half of the twentieth century (Reed 1988).

As in the case of race, the market does not always limit political mobilization. Savitch and Kantor (2002) have shown how variations in capital mobility affect the capacity of local officials to bargain with business. Jurisdictions in which the threat of capital mobility is diminished are often better positioned to extract more concessions from business with respect to regulatory and redistributive policies. It follows that such locales might also prove to be fertile ground for grassroots political activity among groups seeking a redistribution of wealth and power. Also, cities with a substantial level of indigenous economic activity within their neighborhoods might be more conducive to mass mobilization (Williamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz 2002). A vibrant nucleus of community development corporations and other community-based organizations provided the foundation for a progressive governing coalition in Boston during the 1980s (Dreier and Ehrlich 1991). Alternatively, Imbroscio (1998) posits that a sizable sector of small, independent, and relatively immobile businesses might spur the development of a regime committed to progressive goals.

Structures such as race and the market impose essential baseline conditions for assessing the likelihood of political mobilization in cities, but agency is also critically important and is best explored at the group level. Social movement theory is particularly useful in explaining why individuals and groups sometimes take to the streets or voting booths. Grievances are omnipresent in human society and so alone are not a satisfactory explanation for political activity. However, scholars have found that suddenly imposed grievances (Walsh 1981) or perceptions of relative deprivation may spark collective protest (Gurr 1970). Others point to societal shifts that produce a swelling of resources such as money, leadership, and expertise that boost the prospects for mobilization (Cress and Snow 1996; McCarthy and Zald 1977). The social cohesion of groups has a similar effect; organizations with a relatively homogeneous social composition find it easier to pursue group goals than organizations fractured by racial, ethnic, class, and cultural divisions (Brown 1999; Kann 1986). ¹² Finally, a shift in what social movement scholars call the “political opportunity structure” (Eisinger 1973) may expose fissures among elites or new weaknesses within a political system that had previously maintained existing arrangements of power and wealth (Jenkins 1985). Such shifts may prompt individuals to perceive grievances in a new light, envision alternative possibilities, and believe that such options are actually feasible. At the same time, scholars of social movements realize that such phenomena are rare in part because of subjective impediments to mobilization. McAdam (2017) notes,

Human beings are creatures of habit, deeply invested in the taken-for-granted routines, behavioral norms, and established world views that structure our lives. Emergent collective action almost always requires people to depart from those routines, violate those norms, and begin to act in accordance with new conceptions of ourselves and the world. (p. 199)

Advocates of change thus use framing strategies, both diagnostic and prognostic, to foster a more politicized consciousness conducive to effective grassroots activism (Rabrenovic 2009; Snow et al. 1986).

The role of agency in accounting for mobilization is relevant not just with respect to groups striving to advance their interests; it also encompasses actions by elites seeking to counteract mobilization initiatives. Such actions may be directed within the material realm. Katz (2008), for example, elaborated various means to “manage marginalization” to explain the lack of mass protest in American cities with persistent racial and economic inequality (see also Thompson 2006). ¹³ Similarly, demobilization may be pursued through the cultural realm, as Reed (1995) observed in the case of Black politicians relying on a discourse of racial collectivity to subdue incipient insurgencies.

In the end, the mobilization phase of the mobilization–governance framework evaluates the extent to which various groups possess the capacity—material and ideational—to participate effectively in urban politics. It clarifies why some groups are better positioned than others to be significant players in the political sector. In other words, this stage of the mobilization–governance framework identifies a set of mobilized groups that are “ready to go” in terms of effectively pursuing their goals through the process of actual governance. In certain cities, entities ranging from established business advocacy organizations to emerging community groups may be at a heightened level of mobilization while in other cities the mobilization level of similar groups might be depressed.

Once groups are mobilized to participate in the political sphere, what happens next? In a political system based on majority rule, no one group is likely to wield enough clout to win elections and determine policy making. Groups must cooperate by building coalitions with other like-minded groups. The goal of the second stage of the mobilization–governance framework is to reveal how mobilized groups (i.e., groups with resources and organizational capacity and an activist-oriented political consciousness) accumulate the “power to” (Stone 1989) achieve their respective goals through collaboration with other groups within an otherwise diffuse political environment. This aspect of the mobilization–governance framework is, thus, indebted to regime theory’s preoccupation with coalition building and maintenance as an essential component of effective governance. ¹⁴

Coalition building may unfold from the bottom–up. Again, mobilized groups have a powerful incentive to find ways to collaborate to advance their own agendas within a majoritarian political system. This bottom–up process typically entails three distinct phases. First, coalition initiation requires building bridges to other groups through outreach efforts, holding meetings and forums, and developing modes of discourse that facilitate common understandings about the status quo and the potential for change. Actions during this phase are driven by notions of shared interests in overcoming what is deemed an undesirable situation and promoting an alternative state of affairs usually defined in general terms.

Second, coalition formation involves the deployment of various cooperative practices, both internal and external to groups, aimed at producing congruent agendas to guide the coalition. Ideas assume a key role in this phase as individual groups that constitute the coalition strive to work out a joint plan of action based on a similar vision of how the political world should function (Bradford 2010, 2016; Rast 2005).

Third, coalition solidification is associated with the development of routine modes of cooperation that further bind coalition partners in pursuit of an agenda. Commitment to a shared set of ideas or principles may be an important element of coalition building, but for regime theorists, it is not sufficient. For Stone, the glue that held together Atlanta’s governing coalition was the steady collaboration achieved through the skillful distribution of selective incentives and small opportunities. Stoker and Mossberger (1994) contend that cooperation among coalition partners can also be encouraged through other mechanisms such as a strong sense of community or collective identity (see also Brown 1999). Regardless of the motive for cooperation, regular patterns of collaboration over time foster solidarity, trust, and norms of reciprocity among coalition partners that strengthen the alliance (Putnam 2001).

Coalition building from the bottom–up is certainly doable ¹⁵ but, in general, difficult to accomplish because of the diverging interests of individual groups that may agree on an overarching goal such as poverty reduction but disagree on the means to achieve that goal. Collaboration is further hampered by group divisions based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and class.

Another path to productive coalitions in city politics is from the top–down. Political leaders are motivated to aggregate group interests to win elections and, if successful, to use coalitions to advance their agendas through the policy-making process. Politicians seeking high-level, city-wide office are often able to draw on considerable experience in local politics in constructing electoral coalitions. Over the years, they have typically developed a variety of relationships with groups with their own motives for collaboration. Furthermore, successful politicians have accrued multiple skills useful for establishing and maintaining political alliances. The point is that coalition building from the top–down through effective political leadership may be easier to achieve than coalition building from the bottom–up.

It is worth pausing at this point to note how the mobilization–governance framework both follows and deviates from regime theory. As in regime theory, the mobilization–governance framework accords political coalitions a central place in the analysis of urban politics, and the process of how they are constructed and maintained is worthy of careful attention. It differs from regime theory by devoting much more attention to what happens prior to the governance stage—how urban groups are mobilized (or not) to participate effectively within the political realm and how race and market forces structure that mobilization process through a complex blend of material and cultural influences. The mobilization–governance framework also departs from regime theory by highlighting the role of elections in city politics. ¹⁶ Elections matter because they produce elected officials who acquire the formal authority that is necessary, but not sufficient, to move agendas forward. Elections also matter because they may function as a catalyst for group mobilization and coalition building and in the process facilitate the accumulation of resources, the development of organizations, and the fostering of a political consciousness that motivates action. Electoral processes, in other words, often lay the groundwork for governing processes and for that reason alone merit more scrutiny than regime theorists tend to give them.

If a political coalition prevails in a major election, the mayor, as the presumed leader of that coalition, has a clear interest in preserving the coalition that got him or her elected. The coalition partners who provided the means for electoral victory may also be well-positioned to apply pressure in moving initiatives through the policy-making process and responding to inevitable opposition.

However, elections also necessitate changes. Electoral coalitions do not automatically convert into governing coalitions. Nor do electoral agendas automatically convert into governing agendas. Mayoral candidates customarily have some license to make sweeping promises to coalition partners and the voting public. But after election day, the practicalities of governance require a mayor to make hard choices about possible modifications to the composition of the electoral coalition and what aspects of the electoral agenda will be pursued first (if at all) and in what manner. It is at this point that the structural forces involving race and a market economy resurface and exert significant influence. ¹⁷ Regime theory is especially instructive here. A newly elected mayor who is now expected to govern her or his city may be inclined to reach out to business elites who possess abundant instrumental and structural advantages, which may enable a governing coalition to get things done. If business elites had not already been included within the electoral coalition, then the mayor might be inclined to try and incorporate this potent group within the fledgling governing coalition. Even if business elites are not incorporated into the governing coalition, their influence may still be felt as the mayor and other coalition partners rethink the agenda that will guide policymakers. The mayor may move to fulfill certain campaign promises to constituencies that facilitated her or his election, but she or he may also steer away from issues likely to face strong headwinds. Put simply, business interests may wield influence from either inside or outside a governing coalition.

The mobilization–governance framework has much in common with regime theory at this stage of the political process. But there are also important distinctions. First, the mobilization–governance framework differs from regime theory by also stressing the structural impact of race. Deep-seated and long-standing patterns of White racism in all societal organizations and institutions give White individuals and groups disproportionate power. The interests of Whites and business groups win out more often than not given the slanted playing field. ¹⁸ Second, the mobilization–governance framework, with its expanded focus on mobilization and coalition building, is more attentive to the ability of traditionally subjugated groups to rise up and exercise their own political clout, particularly if they have managed to attain a high level of resources, organizational capacity, political consciousness, and coordination with other like-minded entities who share a common agenda and have some staying power. ¹⁹ This is not easy, to be sure, but it is increasingly more common than regime theory would predict because of societal changes that have simultaneously enhanced the mobilization potential of groups that have historically lacked power while weakening or fragmenting groups that have held sway.

Finally, the mobilization–governance framework should be thought of as just that—an analytical framework consisting of a series of relationships that aim to explain and predict political behavior in U.S. cities. ²⁰ It is an expansive framework that strives to cover a lot of ground from the earliest phases of group political activity to the final decision-making processes that determine how urban residents will be governed. But as an analytical framework, it is amenable to discrete study, meaning that it can be evaluated in parts. It is designed to encourage scholars to formulate and test hypotheses related to each segment of the mobilization and governance stages in conjunction with single case studies or comparative case studies with the goal of further developing theories of urban power and politics.

A Case Study: Contemporary Politics in Philadelphia

This final section offers a brief case study to illustrate how the mobilization–governance framework might be employed to explain power and politics in a large American city. Space constraints necessitate that what appears here constitutes only a very general overview of how the framework might be applied.

Philadelphia’s development during the latter half of the twentieth century was similar to that of most other U.S. cities at the time. Amid widespread deindustrialization and suburbanization, the city witnessed a crippling exodus of manufacturing jobs and middle-class residents, which depleted the tax base and left municipal government in a chronic state of fiscal crisis. Shrinking public services and a steady decline in the quality of urban life further impelled the decentralization of jobs and residents (Adams et al. 1991; Wilson 1996).

A rising postindustrial economy based in the downtown core meant that Philadelphia’s Center City and some surrounding neighborhoods thrived, but much of the rest of the city experienced immense deterioration. Economic trends reinforced long-standing racial segregation. Middle- and upper-middle class Whites clustered in Center City and nearby gentrifying neighborhoods while lower-income African-Americans resided in much of West and North Philadelphia. The northeast quadrant of the city was home mostly to working-class Whites while South Philadelphia became the most racially and ethnically diverse section, as Philadelphia became an increasingly popular destination for immigrants. In sum, at the end of the twentieth century, Philadelphia was deeply stratified by race and class and struggling with high levels of unemployment and poverty (Adams et al. 1991).

City politics reflected societal divisions. Intense racial barriers made it difficult for African-Americans to make substantial political inroads even though they constituted over one-third of the city’s population by 1970 (Countryman 2007). Some White politicians became adept at stoking racial prejudices during election campaigns. Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner, was elected and reelected as mayor during the 1970s through blatant racialized appeals (Paolantonio 1993). Wilson Goode finally broke through and became the first Black mayor in the city’s history in 1983, but encountered numerous obstacles in trying to remedy generations of racially discriminatory policies and practices at a time when the federal government’s support for cities was undergoing a devastating retrenchment (Keiser 1997). City administrations throughout this period tended to allocate their scarce resources toward the redevelopment of Center City as the key to promoting economic growth (Bartelt 1989). But while the core of the city more or less flourished, much of the rest of Philadelphia continued to spiral downward, a victim of persistent neglect (Bissinger 1997). The severe inequities engendered by race- and market-based structures might have incited insurgencies within the city’s many underserved communities, but Philadelphia, like most other American cities, did not erupt into mass protest in the post-civil-rights era. Political leaders employed effective demobilization strategies (Katz 2008), while broader policies such as the aggressive and discriminatory crackdown on crime at all levels of government further limited the potential for insurgent politics (Alexander 2010; Oliver 2008).

Throughout much of the latter twentieth century, coalitions led by business elites pursued downtown development as the most reliable generator of jobs and tax revenue. Those coalitions incorporated a host of other groups with a strong interest in progrowth policies, including some that represented elements of the African-American community who perceived no other viable path for advancement (Keiser 1997). Regime theory provided a convincing account of politics in Philadelphia.

By the start of the twenty-first century, however, a number of broad social and political changes were beginning to spur shifts in local politics. Mass incarceration was provoking increased anger among residents who felt they had been unfairly targeted, a sentiment that intensified with a sudden increase in high-profile police shootings of unarmed Black men on city streets around the country (Zimring 2017). The emerging Black Lives Matter movement gained even more support in Philadelphia when Mayor Michael Nutter, in response to a spike in gun-related violence, authorized the city police department to expand a stop-and-frisk procedure that was carried out in a racially discriminatory manner (Maykuth 2008).

Increasing immigration levels in Philadelphia also contributed to a change in grassroots activism. Although Philadelphia was never a major gateway city for immigrants like New York, Los Angeles, or Miami, by the 1990s, it had become a significant destination for Latino and Asian immigrants, who collectively made up an estimated 23% of the city’s population in 2017 (U.S. Census 2018). By virtually all accounts, the influx of immigrants helped to reverse the city’s long-term decline in population and rejuvenate many once-blighted neighborhoods (Blumgart 2018; Vitiello and Sugrue 2017). With respect to grassroots politics, the new immigrants brought with them fresh resources and a willingness to create and expand community-based organizations dedicated to promoting the interests and rights of immigrant groups. Their inclination to participate in politics escalated with a proliferation of anti-immigrant discourse and actions by the U.S. Congress, followed by the Obama administration’s decision to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) regarding the deportation of some undocumented immigrants. Such changes in federal policy provoked an upsurge in mobilization among groups in Philadelphia concerned about immigrant rights (Matza 2013a).

With respect to political economy, increasing concentration of corporate activity, especially in global cities, led to a decreasing presence of corporations based in somewhat smaller, regional cities like Philadelphia. That, in turn, translated into a diminution of organized business activity; the local chamber of commerce, for instance, no longer exercised broad influence over city policymaking (Strom 2008). Meanwhile, many cities like Philadelphia experienced an influx of young, college-educated individuals attracted by job opportunities and the social and cultural amenities of urban life (Florida 2002). The so-called “creative class” evinces a cosmopolitan world view, values tolerance and diversity, and is inclined to embrace progressive politics (Haubert and Fussell 2006). The expansion of this resource-rich group in Philadelphia represents a potential countervailing power to a somewhat weakened business sector, a potential that has been realized in grassroots drives to make urban development processes more rational, participatory, inclusive, and democratic (McGovern 2009, 2013).

Finally, residents of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods have benefited from recent political events. After many years of uneven development policies favoring Center City, John Street, a Black politician from North Philadelphia and president of the city council, was elected mayor in 1999 promising to redirect the city’s priorities. But his ambitious Neighborhood Transformation Initiative ultimately disappointed supporters by raising fears of a return to urban renewal and failing to generate enough resources to overcome extensive blight (McGovern 2006). Street’s successor, Michael Nutter, was swept into office by voters disgruntled with Street’s lack of progress amid a series of scandals that swirled around his administration. But Nutter’s successful, good government initiatives (e.g., zoning reform and campaign finance reform), along with a return to aggressive, progrowth policies oriented to Center City, did not impress an expanding constellation of community-based organizations eager to tackle the entrenched poverty that afflicted so much of the city. During the Nutter administration, and amid the worst economic crisis to hit the nation since the Great Depression, a vibrant living wage movement emerged in Philadelphia, while a coalition of affordable housing providers agitated forcefully for a land bank and housing trust fund (Eichel 2006; Twyman 2005).

Thus, as the 2015 mayoral election approached—and the 2015 election would be a pivotal one because the incumbent was term-limited—many groups throughout Philadelphia stepped up their mobilization efforts, notwithstanding the weighty structural factors that had constrained bottom–up organizing in the past. Moreover, nascent collaboration among emerging mobilized groups held out the promise of an even stronger electoral impact. For example, cooperation among community organizations, labor, and clergy in support of a living wage ordinance and paid sick leave yielded notable policy breakthroughs (Edinger-Turoff 2015; Nadolny 2015). However, the White, middle-class millennials who had served as the backbone of a grassroots movement to transform waterfront development and overhaul zoning law had difficulty connecting with lower-income communities of color in ways that would engage the latter (McGovern 2014).

Although coalition building at the grassroots foundered at times, the 2015 mayoral election afforded a chance for a candidate to forge a broad-based electoral coalition. Jim Kenney had served as an at-large member of city council since 1992. He had grown up in a White, working-class neighborhood in South Philadelphia where Irish- and Italian-American residents provided a reliable base of support for home-grown politicians. Kenney also developed close ties to the city’s building trades unions. This was much the same electoral base that had sent Frank Rizzo to city hall in the 1970s.

However, Kenney had also extended his electoral support in ways that a traditional social conservative like Rizzo never would have contemplated. For instance, Kenney assumed a leadership role on city council as a strong supporter of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights (DeHuff 2014a; Graham 2013). He also recognized relatively early on how mass incarceration was wreaking havoc in lower-income, Black neighborhoods and introduced legislation in city council to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana while advocating strenuously for strong prisoner reentry programs (Graham 2014); Kenney was also a vocal critic of Mayor Nutter’s expanded stop-and-frisk policy (DeHuff 2014b). Finally, in yet another departure from the typical profile of a South Philadelphia politician, Kenney became a dependable supporter of immigrant rights (Matza 2013b), and especially the Nutter administration’s cooperation with ICE (Matza 2009).

All of these outreach efforts to traditionally marginalized groups in Philadelphia earned Kenney the respect of many of these groups before he decided to run for mayor in January 2015. At the same time, he was careful to maintain his core base by cultivating not just his strongest allies in the building trades but all labor unions in the city, including the formidable teachers’ union (Graham 2015). ²¹ Kenney benefited from a relatively weak field of opponents; some prominent figures in Philadelphia politics chose not to run, and some who did encountered unexpected problems or conducted ineffective campaigns. Most observers, however, credit the South Philadelphia politician with extraordinary dexterity in assembling an unusually diverse and broad electoral coalition (Fitzgerald 2015). Kenney cruised to victory in the city’s decisive Democratic primary in May with 56% of the vote, easily outdistancing his closest competitor, Anthony Williams, an African-American state senator who won only 26%. In November, Kenney defeated the Republican Party candidate in heavily Democratic Philadelphia by a six-to-one margin.

The mobilization phase of the mobilization–governance framework can be used to explain the Kenney victory by examining how various groups organized effectively at the grassroots in the years leading up to the 2015 election. Particular attention would be given to how such groups overcame the structural obstacles that tend to impede challenges to White privilege and business power. How did such groups accumulate the resources, organizational capacity, and oppositional consciousness to become influential players in the electoral arena? And how was sufficient collaboration achieved, both from the bottom–up through the diligent, time-consuming efforts of activist leaders and from the top–down through the artful deployment of impressive skills by a notable politician like Jim Kenney?

The governance phase of the mobilization–governance framework can be used to analyze the conversion of an electoral coalition into a governing coalition that strives to advance a common agenda. The agenda that serves to unify the electoral coalition usually will not suffice as a plan for governance. More specific priorities must be set after election day. Inevitably, compromises must be struck that please some coalition partners while disappointing others.

As regime theorists would predict, Mayor Kenney reached out to the downtown business community within weeks of his inauguration, giving a major speech to the chamber of commerce and before presenting his first budget to city council. He praised the chamber, endorsed its plan to reduce business and wage taxes, and promised to work closely with its leadership (DiStefano 2016). Still, it was not yet clear to what extent business elites would be included within the governing coalition or shape its evolving agenda.

That agenda began to materialize during the first few months of 2016. With respect to criminal justice reform, Kenney soon fulfilled campaign promises to aggressively reduce the city’s prison population and implement a new ex-offender reentry program (Gambacorta and Melamed 2017; Melamed 2016). He also vowed to protect immigrant rights, especially in wake of Donald Trump’s rise as the leading GOP candidate in the 2016 presidential primaries. The new mayor responded to Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric against undocumented immigrants by quickly restoring Philadelphia as a sanctuary city (Matza 2016). The centerpiece of Kenney’s agenda would be the imposition of a stiff three cents per ounce tax on sugary drinks, not so much to address public health problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but as a means to fund three ambitious programs to reduce poverty: (1) a major expansion of pre-k education; (2) equitable civic space development centering on the reconstruction of parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, and libraries in underserved neighborhoods (also known as the Rebuild program); and (3) the establishment of “community schools” that would offer an array of social services in addition to traditional classroom learning. Although a number of other cities had considered levying taxes on sugary drinks, only Berkeley, California had succeeded in doing so, and what Kenney proposed was much more far-reaching (Vargas et al. 2016).

Kenney’s agenda appealed to a number of constituents within his governing coalition concerned about civil rights, immigrant rights, and poverty reduction. Others, however, felt slighted. Housing advocates, for example, had managed to convince city government to adopt a housing trust fund in 2005 to deal with Philadelphia’s desperate shortage of decent, affordable housing, a situation exacerbated by the spreading gentrification of neighborhoods outside of Center City. After the 2015 election, they lobbied for a mandatory inclusionary housing bill and a development impact fee to bolster the meager reserves of the housing trust fund, but Kenney remained silent on such issues (Blumgart 2017).

As a sincere proponent of combating poverty and urban blight, Kenney surely sympathized with the affordable housing advocates. But another key coalition partner, the building trades unions, viewed their proposals as a threat to new capital investment. The building trades enjoyed a long-standing relationship with Kenney, dating back to his earliest years on city council. They had also developed an eye-opening ability to raise money for candidates and staff campaigns. Some commentators felt that the building trades had even displaced the downtown business community as the most powerful group in city elections (Warner 2014). And they essentially adhered to the preferences of major business groups, criticizing equitable growth measures such as mandatory inclusionary housing and development impact fees as inimical to a vibrant investment climate (Terruso 2018). Kenney, therefore, decided to avoid taking a public stand on any controversial affordable housing proposal.

Not coincidentally, Kenney also sought to duck another issue critically important to many community-based organizations concerned with economic opportunity for Black and Latino Philadelphians. There was a long history of pervasive racial discrimination within the city’s building trades (Wolfinger 2011). Community groups saw Kenney as an ideal instrument for promoting workforce diversity. Although Kenney initially portrayed his Rebuild program as a vehicle for diversifying the construction unions (Nadolny 2016), he later came under sharp criticism for failing to make significant changes (Jones 2018). Generations of White racism in the construction industry—condoned and reaffirmed by numerous other sectors of urban society—constituted an imposing structural obstacle.

Another tension within Kenney’s governing coalition involved large-scale, development projects such as Drexel University’s massive expansion plan in West Philadelphia. That plan predictably pitted progrowth interests such as real-estate developers and the building trades on one hand and community groups fearing direct encroachment and gentrification on the other. It also pitted activists seeking affordable housing by offering developers density bonuses against good government proponents worried about the city granting numerous variances to a recently reformed zoning code. As with union diversification, Kenney sidestepped this complicated issue (Saksa 2018).

The mobilization–governance framework helps to examine how a governing coalition works through these competing tensions. Like regime theory, it respects the impact of structural forces like the marketplace in giving certain groups a decided advantage. Contemporary urban politics is (still) not an even playing field. But unlike regime theory, it demonstrates how mobilized groups, especially if they are able to collaborate effectively, can ultimately shape the agenda and sway policy making despite intense pressure from business groups and the beneficiaries of White privilege (Terruso and Nadolny 2016).

Evidence of this happening can be found in Philadelphia over the past two years. Advocates for affordable housing and workforce diversity have continued to press their interests, and with some success. City council (narrowly) adopted a 1% tax on all new construction, the proceeds of which would be deposited into the housing trust fund (Otterbein 2018). Under pressure from business and union groups, Kenney declined to support the construction tax but promised to replace approximately 70% of the funds for affordable housing from the proposed measure through other sources. Council members and housing activists agreed to the mayor’s compromise but vowed to press for more funding (McCrystal and McGoldrick 2018). Meanwhile, the mayor is engaged in a contentious negotiation over the content of a Memorandum of Understanding regarding the diversification of the building trades. Insider accounts suggest that, behind the scenes, the mayor is leaning hard on the unions to make unprecedented commitments regarding inclusion programs and minority hiring (Witherspoon 2018).

In sum, the agenda setting and policy outcomes associated with the Kenney administration indicate that the market and race continue to privilege business and other progrowth interests and, more broadly, White citizens. However, mobilized groups have achieved their own successes by drawing on their supporters to exert pressure at election time ²² and during the policy-making process in ways that regime theory struggles to explain.

Conclusion

Recent scholarship on the carceral state and its political consequences is rewarding not just because it casts much-needed light on how race structures local power but because it exposes how the paradigm based on political economy neglects certain aspects of urban politics—the political lives of ordinary people and the factors that encourage or discourage their political activity, particularly those associated with the cultural realm of ideas, values, beliefs, norms, and discourses. Attention to those crucial aspects of the political world of cities helps to explain a great deal, including the somewhat surprising lack of grassroots activism in cities. However, in embracing this research and perhaps even suggesting that it constitutes a new paradigm of urban politics (Stone 2017), we should be careful about undervaluing what has been so insightful about the political–economy framework and its most influential manifestation, regime theory. Its proponents are correct in asserting that while grassroots protest matters, as well as the ideas and ideologies that underlie such protest, it is necessary to elaborate how ideas and protests turn into enduring modes of governance. For that, regime theory, with its focus on material resources, organizations, and routine methods of cooperation among actors in the public and private sectors, remains essential to any understanding of urban power dynamics.

The synthesis offered here in the form of the mobilization–governance framework is an attempt to bring together what is valuable in each approach. It improves on the political–economy framework by revealing how race determines political activity as much as market forces. It is not enough to show how various actors are motivated by race to pursue their interests in the political realm; rather, sustained attention to past and current racist structures illuminates how and why some forms of political activity never even materialize or proceed in a debilitated form or, alternatively, why other forms of activism may be unusually forceful. The latter outcome points to another dimension of the mobilization–governance framework—its dynamic character. While regime theory has been faulted for its limitations in accounting for political change, the mobilization–governance framework, with its stress on group mobilization, highlights how established arrangements may come under attack, be destabilized, and then transformed. It is a process that emphasizes not just the material realm of group resources and organizational capacity but a cultural realm that considers how ideas and values motivate or stultify collective action. Finally, the mobilization–governance framework refocuses analysis on other institutions in local political systems, particularly elections and the policy-making process, to explain power and politics in contemporary American cities.