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Situated at the intersection between histories of urban politics, civil rights, and the rise of neoliberalism, this article explores the changing dynamics of mayoral politics in Atlanta, Georgia, during the first two decades of black governance. In particular, it charts the efforts of Atlanta’s first two black mayors, Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young, to negotiate the changing economic, political, and social climate of the 1970s and 1980s. Compelled to abandon a pro-labor, community control politics in favor of policies favoring Atlanta’s tourism industry, Atlanta’s mayors worked to craft a new liberal politics that appealed to the city’s diverse electorate, investors, and other outside spectators. In doing so, they relied on and appropriated the city’s civil rights legacy to help them forge new alliances—as well as rebuild old ones—and provided an example for liberal politicians across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the current conjuncture of neoliberal urbanism, when more than 20 years have passed since scholars identified the retrenchment of the federal state from urban affairs and the shift from urban government to urban governance, those of us engaged in questions of urban politics have much yet to learn about the power relations in American cities. At the same time, we must recognize those key concepts and frameworks that have shaped our ability to understand both the processes involved in urban politics and the expressions of those processes, as they are manifest in concrete places and often, literally, in places made of concrete. The urban regime, as explained by Clarence Stone a quarter century ago in Regime Politics, is one such concept, as illustrated in a very compelling empirical investigation, that has shaped the lexicon of how we understand cities. Stone’s contribution came along at a time when geographers were grappling with understanding the local and the global and their relationship to capitalism. Geographers engaged regime theory in fits and starts with other conceptual innovations in the field, including the regulation approach, flat ontologies, and relational sense of place. If we apply these three conceptual innovations to the regime approach, as I argue we should, then we get a much more robust conceptual tool to understand the contemporary urban political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With hindsight covering a quarter of a century of Regime Politics, this reflection calls for refashioning the concept of an urban regime into a more encompassing idea of a multitiered political order. As an approach to political change, cross-time comparisons suggest that periodization can highlight how forces conjoin in different ways as political development unfolds. From this perspective, there is little reason to expect to find in today’s cities a stable and cohesive governing coalition held together around a high-priority agenda. Yet the need for resources to be commensurate with policy goals and the strength of purpose in the face of an established mind-set are key lessons to be retained from the past experiences of Atlanta and other cities. While systemic inequality continues as an overarching reality, mitigating responses can be worked out in the middle ground between structure and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzes the role of African Americans as legislators in Georgia. Proliferation of Georgia's African American legislative representation; Institutionalization of the African American caucus; Profile of Georgia's African American legislators.

This article cites a natural tension between citizen participation in public agencies and the drive for organizational stability. The power stability hypothesis, based on exchange theory, suggests that weaker organizations are more likely to offer citizens stronger roles in their planning processes. The article analyzes a survey of 394 citizen units m 193 planning and development agencies in Georgia. A standardized measure of the citizen-agency contract is developed. A panel of experts provides data on the level of power of host agencies. The central finding of the study is the inverse association between the level of agency power and strong citizen roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on intergovernmental cooperation in Georgia. Using intergovernmental expenditure data, it focuses upon cities and counties in Georgia and the extent to which these general-purpose local governments cooperate with the state and other local governments in the delivery of local public services. The purpose here, then, is twofold: to describe intergovernmental cooperation in Georgia from the perspective of the state's municipalities and counties and to explain intergovernmental cooperation in the state. This explanation involves testing the relationship between intergovernmental cooperation and three independent variables identified in earlier works--population, metropolitan status, and form of government. Two additional independent variables are also introduced--the number of municipalities within a county and the percentage of a county's population residing in incorporated areas. The results of such impact-oriented research could provide information regarding the effectiveness of intergovernmental cooperative agreements.