Planting the Grassroots: Structuring Citizen Participation

The reasons for the success or failure of neighborhood organizing efforts have been a persistent concern of policymakers and political analysts for decades. However, most studies of the subject have been limited in their ability to offer generalizations beyond their target area due to the constraints of local conditions or idiosyncratic group histories. This volume employs a case study of Birmingham Alabama's successful citizen participation program to examine the dynamics of grassroots political activity and the techniques that are effective in promoting such activity. As Haeberle demonstrates, the Birmingham neighborhood associations have the same rules, structure, and reliance on outside assistance, and are numerous enough to facilitate statistical analysis, thus offering an unusual opportunity to separate some of the long-term issues of organizational development from those that are more ephemeral. Planting the Grassroots relies on interviews with neighborhood presidents and with city decisionmakers involved in creating the Program, archival data collected on participation in neighborhood elections, and census data. Beginning with an overview of the origins of Birmingham neighborhood activity, Haeberle goes on to address the determinants of neighborhood activity and the effects of neighborhood participation. He examines why the programs were especially successful in certain neighborhoods, how the city structured neighborhood groups to achieve maximum participation, and the associations' abilities to stimulate activity beyond their own volunteer groups. The final section of the book looks at neighborhood organizations in the large context of city politics, and especially at the role of the local neighborhood association in dealing with urban race relations.