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Political Incorporation Analysis

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Political incorporation refers to the extent to which a group's interests are effectively represented in policy making. This can be measured by looking at the extent to which a group is represented in a coalition that dominates city policy-making on issues concerning them. There is a range of possibilities. A group is not represented at all when there are no officials from a group holding political office and the group does not participate in a coalition that does have control over city government on the issues most important to them. Sometimes there is some representation, on a council dominated by a coalition, when a group has a large role in a dominant coalition that is committed to minority interest. Groups with the highest levels of political …show more content…

People are generally rational, meaning that they will most often act in their own self-interest. On some level, this is something that citizens and voters recognize and they vote for the leader or representative whose interests seem to line up closest with their own. They figure that if the person with interests closest to their own is elected, more decisions and policies will be made that will have positive results for them. As shown in some of the chapters in Racial Politics in American Cities, political incorporation by forming coalitions and electing members of minority groups has varying levels of impact for the local minority communities. In some cities, like New York City, minority leaders in elected office fail to make positive changes for the minority community or voters fail to elect minority leaders because, perhaps they take office and their goals get lost in the office and how things have been done previously, or because they fail to build a governing coalition or they are unable to build a strong enough minority coalition to elect leaders. In other cities, like Atlanta, Georgia, elected minority leaders manage to make changes that have a positive effect on the minority group coalitions that elected them. In places like Atlanta and Denver, election of minority leaders can lead to increased minority representation in employment in city …show more content…

Getting members of the community involved in governing and decision-making is important. Implementing programs like the participatory budgeting one found in at least one New York City council district. In such programs, a community's residents have access to a certain portion of the district's annual budget and through a series of neighborhood assemblies and public meetings over the course of several months, residents brainstorm ideas of projects that are needed in their neighborhoods. At the end of the process, the residents get to vote on the project proposals to choose which ones are most important to the community and the projects receiving the most votes get implemented (“What do you want in out neighborhood”). In programs like these, people in low-income, majority minority neighborhoods are able to be part of the decision-making process and projects that are important to them can get done. Though participation in participatory budgeting programs in U.S. municipalities has a lot of room for growth, it's things like this that can help mobilize minority groups and encourage participation in the local political

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