Comparative Civic Culture

The quest for a theoretical framework for understanding urban policy-making has been a recurring focus of research into local governments. Civic culture is a means for understanding how municipal policy-makers weigh the interests of different groups, govern the local community, frame local goals, engage in decision-making, and ultimately select and implement public policies.

While it seems that culture 'matters' in local policy-making, how to measure culture in a valid and replicable fashion presents a significant challenge which the authors address in this book. They present their findings of a large multi-city research project to explore the nature of civic culture in cities in the US and Canada.

The focus of their analysis is on three overarching 'systems': the community power system, the community value system, and the community decision-making system. The authors address a number of questions around the nature of civic culture and the relationships between the three systemic elements of civic culture, to refine and apply a more sophisticated theory of urban policy-making.

Comparative Civic Culture by Laura A. Reese and Raymond A. Rosenfeld offers insightful exploration into these themes, contributing significantly to the understanding of urban policy structures.