Divided Regions: Race, Political Segregation, and the Fragmentation of American Metropolitan Policy
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Since the 1980s, the American federal government has devolved a wide array of crucial policy decisions - from transportation to welfare initiatives - to the state and local levels. With a decrease in federal aid and an increase in the number of tools available to lower tiers of government, scholars of American urban politics have suggested that cooperation among metropolitan jurisdictions could help address critical political and policy challenges, including inequities in municipal resources and unfettered suburban sprawl. This dissertation argues that metropolitan political segregation|that is, geographically-based political divisions - represents a serious obstacle to these partnerships and remains poorly understood. This project thus has two goals: to explain variations in metropolitan political segregation and explore their consequences for regional coalition-building. I first present a theory connecting America's unique racial geography to political segregation. I contend that racially segregated metropolitan areas with large minority population concentrations will experience more political segregation than their more homogenous peers. These political divisions will in turn hinder coalition-building surrounding critical metropolitan policies. Marshaling 1988 and 2000 precinct-level electoral data for every metropolitan area in the country, I find that racial demographics almost exclusively explain variations in political segregation, with more racially segregated, heavily black and Latino metropolitan areas exhibiting greater geographic political divisions. These rifts in turn have a potent impact on metropolitan policy outcomes. Taking advantage of an array of qualitative and quantitative data on mass transportation and affordable housing policy-making, I discover that greater political segregation constrains metropolitan coalition-building and spurs more fragmented policy outcomes. These findings have a disturbing implication: those regions with concentrated pockets of poverty - places most in need of metropolitan cooperation in the contemporary, heavily localized political climate - are the least able to forge partnerships around shared local policy goals.
Author: Katherine Levine Einstein
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2106093008