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Empowered participation : reinventing urban democracy

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Every month in every neighborhood in Chicago, residents, teachers, school principals, and police officers gather to deliberate about how to improve their schools and make their streets safer.

Residents of poor neighborhoods participate as much or more as those from wealthy ones.

All voices are heard. Since the meetings began more than a dozen years ago, they have led not only to safer streets, but also to surprising improvements in the city's schools.

Chicago's police department and school system have become democratic urban institutions unlike any others in America. "Empowered Participation" is the compelling chronicle of this unprecedented transformation.

It is the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the ways in which participatory democracy can be used to effect social change.

Using city-wide data and six neighborhood case studies, the book explores how determined Chicago residents, police officers, teachers, and community groups worked to banish crime and transform a failing city school system into a model for educational reform. The author's conclusion: properly designed and implemented institutions of participatory democratic governance can spark citizen involvement that in turn generates innovative problem-solving and public action.

Their participation makes organizations more fair and effective.

Though the book focuses on Chicago's municipal agencies, its lessons are applicable to many American cities.

Its findings will prove useful not only in the fields of education and law enforcement, but also to sectors as diverse as environmental regulation, social service provision, and workforce development.

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Product Details
Princeton University Press
0691126089 / 9780691126081
Paperback / softback
13/03/2006
United States
English
x, 278 p. : ill.
24 cm
research & professional /academic/professional/technical Learn More
Reprint. Originally published: 2004.
With the clarity of a finely etched drawing and the sparkling craft of a careful researcher, Archon Fung rediscovers the best traditions of American self-government. He introduces us to democracy's heroes in community police beat meetings and school council sessions. Look to the streets, he urges in a book bristling with insight and inspiring stories, a book that should be required reading for every student, scholar and citizen of democracy. -- Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School, and coauthor of "The Miner's Canary" For readers who like theory grounded in a careful exam
With the clarity of a finely etched drawing and the sparkling craft of a careful researcher, Archon Fung rediscovers the best traditions of American self-government. He introduces us to democracy's heroes in community police beat meetings and school council sessions. Look to the streets, he urges in a book bristling with insight and inspiring stories, a book that should be required reading for every student, scholar and citizen of democracy. -- Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School, and coauthor of "The Miner's Canary" For readers who like theory grounded in a careful exam 1KBBNC Illinois, JFSG Urban communities, JPP Public administration, JPR Regional government