Juliet Musso

University of Southern California | USC · Price School of Public Policy

This paper presents an exploratory case study of a performance-based intergovernmental grant program, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) homeless assistance grants to local Continuums of Care (CoC). The goal is to illuminate the mechanisms by which a federal agency may communicate its priority goals to local grant recipients a...

This article advances a framework for identifying the likely implications of incentive intensity and associated transaction costs when employing performance management systems in the public sector. Performance management encompasses a broad range of systems including Managing for Results, PerformanceStat systems, performance-based contracting, and...

This study analyses volunteerism in public safety as a case of ‘participative coproduction’ that has the potential to improve administrative efficiency through substitution of labour but at the cost of administrative complexity. Coordination costs relate to the interdependent character of the public service relationship and the non-excludability of...

This paper examines the variant roles that specific forms of networked-based social capital play in supporting the democratic functions of a neighbourhood governance network in Los Angeles. A significant body of empirical work has demonstrated the positive role that social capital plays in the functioning of civil society, but there has been less a...

Although a wide-ranging literature explores the favorable effects of social capital, it is only relatively recently that systematic attention has been directed to the manner in which social networks emerge and the consequent implications for civic engagement and collaborative governance. This article employs advanced social network statistical mode...

This paper considers whether neighborhood councils, such as those being implemented currently in Los Angeles, are likely to fall victim to the narrow parochial concerns for which neighborhood organizations are often criticized. The paper is based on analysis of data from a survey of 550 neighborhood organizations in the City of Los Angeles. We argu...

In democratic theory, community-representing organizations play a critical role in mediating between citizens and elites. While proponents argue that neighborhood governance can improve efficacy and responsiveness of urban governance, critics warn that socioeconomic bias privileges the parochial interests of higher-income residents. There is limite...

With faith in government waning, cultural diversity spiraling, and fiscal stress straining the ability of policy makers to address the policy challenges accompanying these developments, the salience of (re)connecting citizens with government takes on renewed urgency today. Nowhere is this more the case than in urban America, where so-called global...

Efforts to understand the successes and limitations of civil society institutions have inspired a growing literature on social networks, social capital, and the role that social relationships play in developing group norms supporting collective action and in linking groups to network-based resources. The literature has tended to emphasize broad ego...

We examine the manner in which voluntary associations expose individuals to differing perspectives, or “cross-talk.” Specifically we develop hypotheses based on the interactive roles of elite bias and homophily in structuring networks of democratic participation and test them on social network data of Los Angeles neighborhood councils. We find that...

Understanding how civic associations shape individuals' understanding of and participation in local political affairs requires a focus on the structural and affective networks engendered by associations. Using micro-level network data, we analyse the networks developed by two different forms of voluntary associations: neighbourhood councils and fai...

To address the question on democratic legitimacy of community-or neighborhood-representing organizations, this paper was based on Pitkin's differentiation of representation. Among her four semantic discernment of the term, the relationship among formalistic and descriptive was empirically analyzed. The main motivation for considering the quality of...

This article analyses the factors that explain the characteristics of board member representation in place-based voluntary associations. Specifically, it considers the extent up to which formalistic factors (electoral arrangements) and community context explain descriptive minority representation in Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils. The results of...

It is held that nonprofit and voluntary organizations contribute to democratic governance by representing the interests of their constituents to the state. Yet little is known about the capacities of these organizations to represent effectively their constituents and the larger community. This study proposes a framework for understanding the variet...

This paper analyzes state budgetary processes and reforms to inform California budgetary policy. We consider key institutional provisions, including budget periodicity, tax and expenditure limitations, balanced budget and reserve requirements, and supermajority vote requirements, and analyze the extent to which changes are likely to advance procedu...

This article considers the democratic implications of the shift toward policy making and implementation through networks, integrating articles presented at a 2003 conference on democratic network governance. The authors argue that the effect of increased cross-sectoral and civil society involvement in governing has been to stretch liberal democrati...

This article applies network theory to consider the effects of neighborhood council reform on city governance in Los Angeles. The authors argue that neighborhood councils have the potential to change elite-dominated governance through several network effects: development of bridging social capital—network relationships that cross-cut traditional co...

This paper considers whether new information and communication technologies have significant effects on citizen participation by evaluating the development of a major innovation in electronic governance. We analyze the creation of an electronic system in Los Angeles to provide stakeholders a warning of upcoming political decisions and an opportunit...

Poverty concentration has a significant negative effect on the fiscal health of cities in that it increases spending on antipoverty programs and also raises the cost of providing more general public services such as police and fire protection. Spending patterns among Southern California cities over the last two decades show that poverty strongly in...

The authors investigate the decision of municipal governments to out source the provision of public services during the 1980s and 1990s—a period of increased responsibility for municipalities. This study extends previous empirical work on outsourcing by distinguishing the type of outsourcing used (e.g., public, private, or other types of providers)...

In this paper, we describe highlights of a research project funded by the NSF Digital Government program. The study has examined the impacts of advanced communication technologies in the implementation of a system of neighborhood councils in Los Angeles. It employs social network analysis to chart the development of political networks engendered by...

Federalism involves allocation of powers between units of government at different geographic levels. In local areas, changes in relationships between units of government may be effected through incorporation or disincorporation, annexation, formation of new layers of government, or interjurisdictional agreements. It may be difficult for residents w...

Following reforms to the city charter in 1999, the City of Los Angeles is currently implementing a city-wide system of neighbourhood councils that is intended to increase citizen participation in local governance and make city agencies more responsive to local needs. As neighbourhood council formation has gotten underway, faith organizations (FOs)...

Objective. This paper analyzes the extent to which voter behavior in city formation elections supports Tiebout's (1956) hypothesis that residential sorting facilitates efficiency of local service provision. It develops a two-stage model of city formation to distinguish agenda setting from voter outcomes on city formation proposals. Methods. Lo...

No Abstact.

This paper is the second in the Metamorphosis Project White Paper series, a series addressed to urban policymakers and practitioners (see p. 1 in the Appendix for the full series). The larger Metamorphosis Project research design is both unusual and complex. Detailed descriptions of all its features are reserved for presentation in the Metamorphosi...

This paper examines the extent to which innovative applications of web technology might advance local governance reform. Synthesizing theories from communications, public policy, urban political science, and political philoso-phy, it develops two basic approaches to local governance reform. The entrepreneurial model envisions the city primarily as...

This paper examines the role that neighborhood associations might play in helping to govern American cities. In contrast to recent arguments that there has been a decline in grass-roots level "social capital," the empirical evidence suggests that local neighborhood associations are growing in number, and are increasingly active. We discuss the theo...

Although the Internet has been touted as a means to improve democratic governance, there has been little systematic analysis of its use. The authors analyze the diffusion of municipal Web sites that include information concerning a specific locality. The analysis is based on demographic and fiscal data from 454 California cities and two surveys of...

This paper considers the variant roles that differing forms of social network relationships play in supporting collective action and linking community-representing associations to political resources. It extends a literature that has tended to focus on broad egocentric networks or service networks, and that often conceptualizes social capital in la...

Phillips (1995b) argues for the enhanced descriptive representation which the core concept of the politics of presence. Its requirements are exemplified as: "the demands for the equal representation of women with men; demands for a more even-handed balance between the different ethnic groups that make up each society; demands for the political incl...

This comparative study focuses on citizen participation in the design of participatory mechanisms within two regions, Los Angeles, California and Randstad, Netherlands. Each region is currently experimenting with institutional change to improve citizen