The New Political culture, which began to take shape in the 1970s, continues to challenge many assumptions of traditional politics, especially on issues of environmentalism, growth management, gay rights, and abortion. Concerned mostly with home, consumption, and lifestyle, the New Politics emerges fully in cities with more highly educated citizens, higher incomes, and more high-tech service occupations. Leadership does not come from parties, unions, or ethnic groups but rather shifts from issue to issue: leaders on abortion are distinct from leaders on environmental issues. Based on data...

Over the past quarter-century, U.S. politicians have responded to the public's fear of crime by devoting ever more resources to building and strengthening the criminal justice apparatus, which as a result has grown tremendously in size and cost. Policymakers have also taken steps to toughen procedures for dealing with suspects and criminals, and broaden legal definitions of what constitutes crime, which has led to the incarceration, under harsher-than-ever conditions, of a record-high percentage of the U.S. population. Yet public confidence in the criminal justice apparatus is, if anything,...

Not all citizens seek to extract a free lunch' from government by demanding more services at the same time that they eschew taxes. It is possible to gather the insights of an representative and informed citizenry in sophisticated and reliable form. Citizen Participation in Resource Allocation explores the means to obtaining informed insight from citizens in ways that can aid decision-makers who seek to understand the preferences of the public as a whole not just from its most vocal critics. Simonsen and Robbins present a description and analysis of several specific participation...

In Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps, Dick Simpson challenges and recasts current theories of Regime Politics as he chronicles the dramatic story of the civic wars in the Chicago City Council since the civil war. At the same time, the author provides a window into the broader struggle for democracy and justice.Simpson points out that through analyzing city council floor fights, battles at the ballot box, and street demonstrations, one can begin to see certain patterns of conflict emerge. These patterns demonstrate that before the Great Depression, fragmented city councils were...