A01=Raphael J. Sonenshein
Activism
African Americans
Anomie
Antonio Villaraigosa
At-large
Author_Raphael J. Sonenshein
Ballot
Borough president
Bureaucrat
Category=JBSD
Category=JPR
Chicago-style politics
Christopher Commission
City attorney
City council
City manager
Civic Coalition
Civil disorder
Class Warfare
Commissioner
Corruption
Counterplan
Devolution
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Exit poll
Gang injunction
Global city
Governance
Government
Headline
Hostility
Ideology
Indictment
Inefficiency
Inspector general
Institute of Public Affairs
Institution
Insurgency
Intimidation
Lame duck (politics)
Local government
Mayor-council government
National League of Cities
Organized crime
Pessimism
Police misconduct
Political campaign
Political machine
Politician
Politics
Power broker (politics)
Precinct
Provision (contracting)
Public Agenda
Racial profiling
Racism
Radical Change
Radicalism (historical)
Rampart scandal
Redistricting commission
Referendum
Reformism
Regime
Republican Party (United States)
Richard Riordan
Ruth Galanter
Secession
State of emergency
Tax
Term limit
Urban politics
Veto
Voting
War
Product details
- ISBN 9780691126036
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 22 May 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The City at Stake tells the dramatic story of how the nation's second-largest city completed a major reform of its government in the face of a deeply threatening movement for secession by the San Fernando Valley. How did Los Angeles, a diverse city with an image of unstructured politics and fragmented government, find a way to unify itself around a controversial set of reforms? Los Angeles government nearly collapsed in political bickering over charter reform, which generated the remarkable phenomenon of two competing charter reform commissions. Out of this nearly impossible tangle, reformers managed to knit a new city charter that greatly expanded institutions for citizen participation and addressed long-standing weaknesses in the role of the mayor. The new charter, pursued by a Republican mayor, won its greatest support from liberal whites who had long favored reform measures. Written by an urban scholar who played a key role in the charter reform process, the book offers both a theoretical perspective on the process of institutional reform in an age of diversity, and a firsthand, inside-the-box look at how major reform works.
The new afterword by the author analyzes the 2005 election of Los Angeles's first modern Latino mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, a milestone in the development of urban reform coalitions in an age of immigration and ethnic diversity.
Raphael J. Sonenshein is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of "Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles" (Princeton). Between 1997 and 1999, he served as Executive Director of the City of Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission.
