The democratic legitimacy of community associations: Los Angeles neighborhood councils in context

This dissertation assesses the democratic legitimacy of place-based associations that represent geographically bounded communities. The overall goal of this study is to examine empirically the normative assumption that increasing the venues for participation through the creation of multi-issue community associations will create a more democratic local political system. To address this untested assumption, this dissertation presents three separate essays on the democratic character of the emergent neighborhood council (NC) system created by 1999 Charter reform in the City of Los Angeles. Of specific interest is to illuminate how community context mediates the implementation of this system in this multi-minority city. The consideration of community context in studying political behavior is critical because of geographically rooted participatory biases.;The essays address three related questions that illuminate the democratic capacity and legitimacy of the Los Angeles system. The first essay evaluates the influence of contextual factors on the self-organization of NCs under the pragmatic assumption that "early innovators" will face fewer operational barriers and hence may have a higher capacity to function efficaciously. It was found that contextual factors, such as community heterogeneity and community capacity, predict the formation time of NCs. While socioeconomically diverse communities formed NCs earlier, racial diversity appears to slow the process of formation. This indicates the dissimilar impact of community heterogeneity on collective action leading to group formation.;The second and third essays consider the relationship between formalistic representation (i.e., structural factors), descriptive representation (i.e., resemblance of the representatives to their constituencies), and substantive representation (i.e., similarities of perceived needs). It was found that formalistic representation does not have a significant impact on descriptive representation. Community context has a dissimilar impact on racial groups. Specifically, certain racial groups in lower socioeconomic status (SES) communities are influenced negatively compared to others. A relationship between descriptive and substantive representation is not confirmed statistically, but different community heterogeneity characteristics indicate tension between class and race diversity on the substantive representation of NC board members. This implies that class and race heterogeneity might dissimilarly affect the cross-cutting communication patterns within communities leading to different levels of substantive representation.