Democracy in Suburbia

by Oliver, J. Eric

• ISBN13: 9780691088808
• ISBN10: 0691088802
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-08-06
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Suburbanization is often blamed for a loss of civic engagement in contemporary America. How justified is this claim? Just what is a suburb? How do social environments shape civic life? Looking beyond popular stereotypes,Democracy in Suburbiaanswers these questions by examining how suburbs influence citizen participation in community and public affairs. Eric Oliver offers a rich, engaging account of what suburbia means for American democracy and, in doing so, speaks to the heart of widespread debate on the health of our civil society. Applying an innovative, unusually rigorous mode of statistical analysis to a wealth of unique survey and census data, Oliver argues that suburbs, by institutionalizing class and racial differences with municipal boundaries, transform social conflicts between citizens into ones between political institutions. In reducing the incentives for individual political participation, suburbanization has negated the benefits of ''small town'' government and deprived metropolitan areas of valuable civic capacity. This ultimately increases prospects of serious social conflict. Oliver concludes that we must reconfigure suburban governments to allow seemingly intractable issues of common metropolitan concern to surface in local politics rather than be ignored as cross-jurisdictional. And he believes this is possible without sacrifice of local government's advantages. Scholars and students of political science, sociology, and urban affairs will prize this book for its striking findings, its revealing scrutiny of the commonplace, and its insights into how the pursuit of the American dream may be imperiling American democracy.

Author Biography

J. Eric Oliver is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures	ix
List of Tables	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
The Rise of a Suburban Demos	1	(32)
All Cities Great and Small	33	(35)
Cities of Riches and Squalor	68	(31)
The Civic Paradox of Racial Segregation	99	(35)
A Bedroom Polis	134	(20)
Boomtowns and the Civic Costs of Air-Conditioning	154	(21)
Reform Governments and Their Aftermath	175	(12)
Remaking the Democratic Metropolis	187	(28)
Appendix A The Citizen Participation / Census Dataset	215	(5)
Appendix B Logistic and OLS Regression Equations for the Figures	220	(16)
Appendix C Testing the Relationship between Civic Participation and ``Self-Interest Rightly Understood''	236	(5)
References	241	(14)
Index	255