Since the end of the civil rights era in the sixties it has become increasingly clear that social and political conflicts cannot be resolved entirely at the national level. Struggles between residents of poor neighborhoods and local interest groups or public authorities present some of our most explosive domestic political problems today. This study seeks insight into these problems through an analysis of efforts during the sixties to organize the poor to pursue their interests in local decision-making processes. David J. O'Brien holds that both organizers and scholarly observers of the grass-roots movement have failed to understand properly the process by which interest groups are formed. Arguing that the demise of neighborhood organization cannot be attributed to supposedly unique social, psychological, or cultural characteristics of the poor, he develops an analytical framework that emphasizes the strategic role of incentives and organizational resource problems. This framework helps explain not only the failure of organizers in the sixties to grasp the problems of interest group formation, but also the assumptions that prevented them from identifying the source of their frustration. The author assesses the different approaches that have been taken to neighborhood organization, and outlines a model for future efforts. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government is an historic undertaking. It contains a wide range of essays that define the important questions in the field, evaluate where we are in answering them, and set the direction and terms of discourse for future work. The Handbook will have a substantial influence in defining the field for years to come. The chapters critically assess both the key works of state and local politics literature and the ways in which the sub-field has developed. It covers the main areas of study in subnational politics by exploring the central contributions to the comparative study of institutions, behavior, and policy in the American context. Each chapter outlines an agenda for future research.

Designed to help build powerful community organizations, empower ordinary citizens to become leaders, and bring about major social and economic change, this book offers a coherent practice-based framework for understanding social action, with power and empowerment at the center of analysis. Topics include recruiting members, consensus building, leadership, publicity, and fundraising.

This book describes a great change in the interest groups in American politics and includes analysis of the legal limits of non-profit politics. It examines the effects of the new Democratic majorities on partisan lobbying, political action committee spending.

First published in 1983. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

American cities are shifting collections of individual neghborhoods. Thousands of residents move every year within and among neighborhoods; their flows across a city can radically and quickly alter the character of its neighborhoods. What is behind all this ferment—the decline of one area, the revitalization of another? Can the process be made more rational? Can city neighborhoods be stabilized--and older cities thus preserved? This book argues that such flows of residents are not random. Rather, they are closely linked to overall migration into or out of each metropolitan area and to the way U.S. cities develop. Downs contends that both urban development and the social problems it spawns are built upon social arrangements designed to benefit the middle-class majority. Racial segregation divides housing in each metropolitan area into two or more markets. Socioeconomic segregation subdivides neighborhoods within each market into a class hierarchy. The poor live mainly in the oldest neighborhoods, close to the urban center. The affluent live in the newest neighborhoods, mostly at the urban periphery. This separation stems not from pure market forces but from exclusionary laws that make the construction of low-cost housing illegal in most neighborhoods. The resulting pattern determines where housing is built and what housing is left to decay. Downs uses data from U.S. cities to illustrate neighborhood change and to reach conclusions about ways to cope with it. he explores the causes and nature of racial segregation and integration, and he evaluates neighborhood revitalization programs, which in reviving part of a city often displace many poor residents. He presents a timely analysis of the effect of higher energy costs upon urban sprawl, argues the wisdom of reviving older cities rather than helping their residents move elsewhere, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of public and private policies at the federal, state, metropolitan-area,