| This dissertation analyzes the pattern and form of citizens' efforts to lobby local government. Specifically, I explore what types of local issues generate citizen participation and how citizens try to influence those issues. Once citizens decide to participate, what policies do they try to influence and what activities do they engage in to accomplish their goals? My research is based on a study of Santa Ana, California, a city of about 300,000 located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The primary data source is a set of interviews with citizens active in Santa Ana politics. Respondents were asked about their political activities, with a focus on the tactics and strategies they used when they tried to influence local policy. Other sources of information, such as city council/school board minutes and newspaper accounts, were also used to supplement interview data. The analysis is mostly qualitative, pulling together information from various sources to draw a picture of the patterns and forms of participation in Santa Ana.I make two central arguments. First, what policies citizens try to influence is a result of policy characteristics, the opportunity to participate, and the relationship of public policies to larger social debates. These three factors account for the variation in participation that we see across public policies, with policy characteristics having the greatest influence on which policies generate the most participate. Secondly, participants took a multi-faceted approach to lobbying local government, utilizing both formal participatory institutions and informal channels in their efforts to influence local policy. Thus, I argue that citizen efforts to influence policy benefit from the existence of formal participatory channels, such as public meetings, as well as informal channels created by social networks. |
