Strategies, Outcomes and the Potential for Civil Society in Democratizing Urban Development

To bring democracy to a city is to move toward the ideal of the inclusive city – a particular challenge in a world where housing costs and demand for housing are both on the rise, and both factors in the problems of housing affordability and displacement. The notion of an inclusive city entails not only housing interventions, but also the inclusion of civil society in official decision-making. 'Democratizing Urban Development: Community Organizations for Housing across the United States and Brazil' focuses on both issues by examining how community organizations seek to influence public decision-making on housing matters, as well as what impacts they have on housing policy in particular, and urban development in general. The book presents a holistic and dynamic framework that helps assess how civil society organizations (CSOs) – or, more specifically, community organizations – operate in order to influence official decision-making. With its comparative case study approach, the book leverages case study methodology to provide rich detail and competent analyses covering four selected cases. The author, Maureen Donaghy, is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, USA. She is the author of 'Civil Society and Participatory Governance: Municipal Councils and Social Housing


Strategies, Outcomes and the Potential for Civil Society in Democratizing Urban Development
e0008 -2/7 Programs in Donaghy (2018) goes to great lengths to assess the extent to which CSOs play a transformational role in democratizing urban development. The traditional literature on urban politics, especially in the United States, has tended to argue that civil society has practically no impact on urban policy-making; recent studies indicate otherwise. How then to assess the impact of CSOs on urban politics?
Donaghy has developed a study that retraces strategies and outcomes in order to shed light on how community organizations act to influence official decisionmaking, as well as to enumerate their achievements. In order to investigate outcomes, she looked at CSOs' "ability to overcome opposition to their claims in addition to the capacity of the government to respond favorably" (DONAGHY, 2018, p. 91). Her assumption is that "the strategies CSOs undertake, constrained by their own agency and the environment in which they operate, largely determine the extent to which their role is transformational in democratizing urban development" (DONAGHY, 2018, p. 02 What strategies did the organizations undertake in order to influence official decision making regarding housing policy? 02. Why did these organizations choose certain strategies and not others? 03. What outcomes did these strategies bring about in terms of housing policy and democratic governance? These questions led the author into the hazardous business of drawing causal inferences on the effects of social movements (see KOLB, 2007), and saw her take on the challenge of sizing up the methodological tradeoffs that are part and parcel of case studies (GERRING, 2011).
Although case studies are stronger with respect to internal validity, the generation of hypotheses and the identification of causal pathways (or 'causal chains', to use Donaghy's term), it seems that Donaghy (2018) ascribes a relatively high external validity to her findings -not to mention the claims of hypothesistesting and the implicit estimation of causal effects that put in appearances in the book.
The book comprises seven chapters and an introduction. The first chapter provides an overview of housing politics in Brazil and the United States, and of how their various aspects affect community organizations in both countries. For example, informal housing is much more pervasive in Brazil than in the US, and the characteristics of this informality have tended to prompt communities in Brazil towards collective action, and increase the likelihood of organizations seeking redress in the judicial system in displacement cases -just to mention two of the many consequences of informality at the local level. The book contains a plethora of such interesting insights.
A theoretical framework is outlined in the second chapter. This begins with a typology of strategies based on the means by which CSOs seek to influence the decision-making process. If they act from within political institutions by exercising a greater voice in official decision-making (or if they act to assure such inclusion), it is understood that they seek direct influence, i.e. they are engaging in an 'inclusionary strategy'. If they resort to existing relationships and institutions to persuade decision-makers outside of institutional positions for direct influence, they are pursuing an 'indirect strategy'. If they resort to the electoral process to replace officials in office or reshape government institutions without changing how decisions are made within institutions, they are engaging in an 'overhaul strategy'.
Finally, if they move away from local politics, and seek autonomous solutions, or seek influence in higher levels of government or among global actors, they are pursuing an 'exit strategy' (DONAGHY, 2018, pp. 46-48).
While the literature on social movements usually focuses on tactics, sometimes as synonyms for strategy, Donaghy (2018) (2018) identifies four variables to explain CSOs' strategic choices: ideology, relationship with the State, political opportunities, and resources. In the empirical chapters, she provides detailed information associated with each one and analyzes their role in shaping strategies. She argues that the first two variables play a particularly crucial role in influencing the strategies taken by the organizations. The second part of her framework brings together ideology, relationship with the state, and strategies (see Table 01 below, extracted from the book).

Karin Deleuse Blikstad
(2019) 13 (2) e0008 -5/7  Table 02 below, extracted from the book). Each of the four selected cases represents one of the four possible combinations of the two crucial variables (ideology and the relationship with the State). This seems to have been a good methodological choice for the generation of hypotheses, and she manages to shed some light on the causal pathways for each of the four cases. As can be seen, each type of strategy offers a different potential outcome in terms of democratizing urban development. The best scenario for the democratization of urban development is one in which CSOs exhibit a rights-based ideology and a close relationship to the State (and thus are inclined to engage in inclusionary strategies that could lead to transformation). Although Donaghy (2018) presents and analyzes the complexities of the real cases with competence, the normative assessment that derives from the causal investigation in some passages of the book may raise eyebrows among some readers. Donaghy points (2018) out that an inclusionary strategy is not a "magic bullet" (DONAGHY, 2018, p. 179) toward inclusion, since other intervening variables were present in the case of São Paulo, such as financial capacity and political shifts.
It is well known that official inclusion in decision-making is not equivalent to effective participation in deliberation, nor to any kind of guarantee of implementation (cf. PIRES, 2011). Her study showed that community organizations in all of the four cases engaged in an indirect strategy -in addition to other strategies -and that they "still lack significant control over public decision making" (DONAGHY, 2018, p. 178). Therefore, she argues, "the strategies of organizations need to move toward demanding greater voice from within the state (…)" (DONAGHY, 2018, p. 178). According to her framework, that move is more likely to happen among community organizations characterized by a rightsbased ideology and a close relationship with the State.
That brings us to a difference between both countries that could have been more explicitly set out in the book. In neither Atlanta nor Washington D.C. did CSOs engage in an inclusionary strategy. This could be associated, according to Donaghy, with a "disposition presuming the centrality of representative democracy" and shows evidence to support her argument that an inclusionary strategy could be seen as necessary -but not sufficient -to generate significant changes in how urban development is defined and implemented. From her causal investigation, she CSOs' strategic choices -with ideology at their heart -and the possibilities and limitations that each type of strategy bears for the democratization of urban development.