How can government stay linked to its citizens? Across the world, governments' basic principles are turned on their heads as global markets, weakened national states, and active citizens emerge. Governments increasingly act not alone, but many governments and private groups make policy jointly - labeled 'governance'. But this raises new concerns for adequate citizen responsiveness. Leaders and parties previously considered left or right make unexpected choices - as leaders explore Third Ways, New Political Cultures, and more. As policy choices grow more complicated, they are harder to present to citizens - which undermines citizen legitimacy of parties and elected officials.

How can government maintain democratic accountability? This volume explores new answers by probing citizen involvement in specific cities and countries the world over. There is no single problem, hence no single remedy. But by contrasting key elements of national and local contexts, this volume offers lessons about how citizens are variously activated; about what works, where, and why. From specific results emerge insights about how citizens may drive policy, or be ignored, in a time of turbulence and rapid cultural change for government policy making.

Are you sceptical about the importance of arts and culture, especially about their possible impact on politics and the economy? This volume outlines a new framework for analysis of democratic participation and economic growth and explores how these new patterns work around the world. The new framework joins two past traditions; however, their background histories are clearly separate. Democratic participation ideas come mostly from Alexis de Tocqueville, while innovation/bohemian ideas driving the economy are largely inspired by Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs. New developments building on these core ideas are detailed in the first two sections of this volume. But these chapters in turn show that more detailed work within each tradition leads to an integration of the two: participation joins innovation. This is the main theme in the book's third section, the buzz around arts and culture organizations, and how they can transform politics, economics, and social life.

The past several decades have seen profound changes in the political landscapes of advanced industrial societies. This volume assesses key political developments and links them to underlying socioeconomic and cultural forces. These forces include the growth of a well-educated middle class, the moderating of bipolar class divisions between wealthy c

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

People both live and work in cities. And where they choose to live shifts where and how they work. Amenities enter as enticements to bring new residents or tourists to a city. Amenities have thus become new public concerns for many cities in the US and much of Northern Europe. Old ways of thinking, old paradigms - such as "location, location, location" and "land, labour, capital, and management generate economic development" - are too simple. So is "human capital drives development". To these earlier questions, we add: "how do amenities and related consumption attract talented people, who in turn drive the classic processes which make cities grow?" This new question is critical for policy makers. Urban public officials, business, and nonprofit leaders are using culture, entertainment, and urban amenities to (seek to) enhance their locations - for present and future residents, tourists, conventioneers, and shoppers. This volume explores how consumption and entertainment change cities. But it reverses the "normal" causal process. That is, many chapters analyse how consumption and entertainment drive urban development, not vice versa. It details the impacts of opera, used bookstores, brew pubs, bicycle events, Starbucks' coffee shops, gay residents and other factors on changes in jobs, population, inventions, and more. It interprets these processes by showing how they add new insights from economics, sociology, political science, public policy, and geography. Considerable evidence is presented about how consumption, amenities, and culture drive urban policy - by encouraging people to move to or from different cities and regions. The book also explores how different amenities attract the innovative persons who are catalysts in making the modern economy and high tech hum.

This work studies urban problems and policy. It addresses the socio-economic context of the Metropolitan region. It also discusses: fragmentation, divisiveness and governmental organization; divisiveness and law enforcement; divisiveness and the social services; and, divisiveness and regional development.

This annual publication focuses on four interrelated urban processes: population and employment location; political leadership and policy outputs; bureaucratic processes and service delivery; and citizen preferences and participatory activities.

The Columbine tragedy on April 20, 1999 began a new era in law enforcement as it became apparent that the police response to such mass shootings must be drastically altered. By the time the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, outdated police response strategies had been replaced with new, aggressive tactics used by the first officers on the scene. The frequency with which these events occur remind us time and again about the importance of training and preparing for these critical situations before they occur in our own backyards. Active Shooter Events and Response is one of the first attempts to not only discuss historic active shooter events, but also to actually dissect some of them-empowering law enforcement professionals by leveraging the essential knowledge and experience of those who have gone before us. The book also offers insight into the training methodologies and strategies used to prepare our nation's first responders to address the active shooter threat. In addition, the authors discuss the clear and present threat of terrorist organizations using these mass shooter tactics on American soil-similar to the attacks in Beslan, Russia and Mumbai, India. Written by members of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University, this book is the culmination of more than a decade's worth of training and research into active shooter events and represents state-of-the-art, evidence-based best practices.

This volume explores how consumption and entertainment change cities, but it reverses the 'normal' causal process. That is, many chapters analyze how consumption and entertainment drive urban development, not vice versa. People both live and work in cities and where they choose to live shifts where and how they work. Amenities enter as enticements to bring new residents or tourists to a city and so amenities have thus become new public concerns for many cities in the U.S. and much of Northern Europe. Old ways of thinking, old paradigms - such as 'location, location, location' and 'land, labor, capital, and management generate economic development' - are too simple. So is 'human capital drives development'. To these earlier questions we add, 'How do amenities and related consumption attract talented people, who in turn drive the classic processes which make cities grow?' This new question is critical for policy makers, urban public officials, business, and non-profit leaders who are using culture, entertainment, and urban amenities to enhance their locations - for present and future residents, tourists, conventioneers, and shoppers. The City as an Entertainment Machine details the impacts of opera, used bookstores, brew pubs, bicycle events, Starbucks' coffee shops, gay residents, and other factors on changes in jobs, population, inventions, and more. It is the first study to assemble and analyze such amenities for national samples of cities (and counties). It interprets these processes by showing how they add new insights from economics, sociology, political science, public policy, and geography. Considerable evidence is presented about how consumption, amenities, and culture drive urban policy by encouraging people to move to or from different cities and regions.

Are you sceptical about the importance of arts and culture, especially about their possible impact on politics and the economy? This volume outlines a new framework for analysis of democratic participation and economic growth and explores how these new patterns work around the world. The new framework joins two past traditions; however, their background histories are clearly separate. Democratic participation ideas come mostly from Alexis de Tocqueville, while innovation/bohemian ideas driving the economy are largely inspired by Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs. New developments building on these core ideas are detailed in the first two sections of this volume. But these chapters in turn show that more detailed work within each tradition leads to an integration of the two: participation joins innovation. This is the main theme in the book's third section, the buzz around arts and culture organizations, and how they can transform politics, economics, and social life.

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 gathered by the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, the most extensive study of local government in the world to date, this book provides an explicit analysis of the social structural characteristics that encourage or discourage the New Political culture.

The past several decades have seen profound changes in the political landscapes of advanced industrial societies. This volume assesses key political developments and links them to underlying socioeconomic and cultural forces. These forces include the growth of a well-educated middle class, the moderating of bipolar class divisions between wealthy capitalists and struggling workers, and the accelerated rise of new media technologies (especially television) as potent tools shaping the terms of public discussion. Related political transformations include the spread of new social movements on feminist, environmental, and civil liberties issues; economic concerns focusing more on growth, taxes, and middle class programs than on redistribution; the fracturing of core left and right political ideologies; and the growing centrality of electronic media as carriers of political opinions and rhetoric.In their introduction, Terry Clark and Michael Rempel pull together many seemingly disparate political changes to construct a clear, synthetic framework, identifying eight core components of postindustrial politics. Part Two examines shifts in underlying cultural values. It features a lively exchange between different contributors over whether apolitical, materialistic values have risen or declined since the 1960s. Part Three offers an in-depth look at the political views and party allegiances of the growing middle classes and Part Four examines some of today's most divisive issues.Although primarily adopting a cross-national perspective, "Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Societies" includes several case studies of politics in the United States and one in Japan. Unique in its synthetic vision, thisvolume will stimulate and challenge readers from across the political and theoretical spectrum.

The book provides a wealth of statistically-based evidence to substantiate or repudiate important arguments and assumptions central to the radical changes that are occurring in cities and municipal government. --Max Barlow in Journal of Economic and Social Geography More and more often, city governments operate under turbulent conditions: severe cutbacks in grants from national governments, drop in voter turnouts, taxpayer revolts, and a population of dissatisfied citizens. Urban Innovation addresses these issues by exploring how cities can innovate in the face of such challenges. Based on survey data from the Fiscal Austerity and Innovation Project, this volume reassesses theories of political leadership and government decision making, discusses the ways that cities have made innovations over the past decade, and reviews 33 specific strategies and their results. Some of the other issues this volume addresses are race and class, the growth and decline of city governments, and the intergovernmental aid cutbacks made during the Reagan administration. The turbulence of the past two decades is critical in reshaping our way of thinking about how governments work. Urban Innovation will be useful for students, faculty, and professionals in urban studies, political science, and policy studies.

Humans live in social communities that are embedded ecologically within overlapping biophysical environments. This volume facilitates an ongoing dialogue between community sociologists and environmental sociologists about how humans interact with each other in social communities and with biophysical environments in an ecological community.
The chapters in this volume contribute to three related areas of scholarship. First, chapters two through four deal with the ecological and social significance of place. The authors of these three chapters examine different theoretical and substantive dilemmas regarding place and ecology. Their scholarship investigates the significance of place across a range of natural, modified, and built environments. Second, chapters five through seven deal with the challenges of local sustainability. The authors of these three chapters perform scholarship on social, economic and ecological dimensions of local sustainability. Third, chapters eight through eleven deal with local environmental politics. The authors of these four chapters examine the various dynamics of local political processes in communities across three continents. These scholars explicitly examine how the structure of political opportunities in different localities affects the mobilization necessary to recognize and ameliorate environmental problems.
We anticipate that this volume furthers the cross-pollination of ideas between community sociologists and environmental sociologists. Ultimately, the heightened and sustained communication between these two groups of scholars may lead to emergent theoretical, methodological, and substantive insights that may contribute to the discipline ofsociology more generally.
*Different sections of the book address ecological and social significance of place, challenges of local sustainability, and local environmental politics
*Enhances the interplay of ideas between community sociologists and environmental sociologists
*Stimulates thought that will contribute to the general field of sociology

The book provides a wealth of statistically-based evidence to substantiate or repudiate important arguments and assumptions central to the radical changes that are occurring in cities and municipal government. --Max Barlow in Journal of Economic and Social Geography More and more often, city governments operate under turbulent conditions: severe cutbacks in grants from national governments, drop in voter turnouts, taxpayer revolts, and a population of dissatisfied citizens. Urban Innovation addresses these issues by exploring how cities can innovate in the face of such challenges. Based on survey data from the Fiscal Austerity and Innovation Project, this volume reassesses theories of political leadership and government decision making, discusses the ways that cities have made innovations over the past decade, and reviews 33 specific strategies and their results. Some of the other issues this volume addresses are race and class, the growth and decline of city governments, and the intergovernmental aid cutbacks made during the Reagan administration. The turbulence of the past two decades is critical in reshaping our way of thinking about how governments work. Urban Innovation will be useful for students, faculty, and professionals in urban studies, political science, and policy studies.