Local self-government against the state
The re-election of Donald Trump worries many people about the condition of democracy in the US. How much pressure from executive power can the country withstand? Yet with America’s rightward turn, authoritarianism is less an exception than a rule in the Global North. In Austria, the Freedom Party won the elections in 2024. The Netherlands had a similar outcome in 2023, with Geert Wilders’ success, and Italy has been governed by Brothers of Italy since 2022. The rightward turn in the West was initially taken in eastern Europe in the 2010s, where the Right rose to power in Hungary, Poland, recently joined by Slovakia.
On Their Own Terms
Informal settlements are urban communities where most people build homes and live without formal approval from government authorities. Residents in these communities often lack access to basic infrastructure and services such as clean water, proper sanitation and electricity. At the same time, they face a constant struggle for inclusion in urban governance and decision-making processes. To address some of these challenges, governments, policymakers and urban planners promote participatory mechanisms – community meetings, local councils, and consultations – as tools to ensure that marginalized communities have a say in shaping their neighborhoods. But do these mechanisms genuinely lead to meaningful inclusion, or are they just tokenistic gestures? This question inspired us to conduct a study in Nima and Old Fadama, Accra’s largest informal settlements.
Neo-Progressivism and Urban Politics in the Ongoing Interregnum
Over the past decade, neo-progressive candidates have been elected to lead several major cities across Europe and the United States: the mayors of change in Spain (2015-2019), the Green mayors in France (2020), as well as leaders in Athens, Berlin, Naples, Preston, and Zagreb. These politicians share a common agenda: rejecting urban austerity policies, promoting more democratic governance, ensuring fair access to public services, fighting against social inequalities and advancing ecological resilience. This shift is particularly significant, as urban governance had been dominated by the neoliberal paradigm since the 1980s, emphasizing economic competitiveness, territorial attractiveness, and budgetary discipline.
Cities and Their Neighbors
Kenosha County, Wisconsin held the state's only contested race for District Attorney last year. The community's recent history of protest and violence resurfaced in the campaign as the Republican candidate had once represented a bail fund for Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who shot and killed two local protesters. In the end, Republican Xavier Solis secured a narrow victory (51% - 49%) over Democrat Carli McNeil. However, this overall result obscures deep divisions within Kenosha County. Solis won just 43% in the city of Kenosha—the largest, most diverse city in the county and the site of the recent protests—he averaged 63% of the vote in the much smaller, whiter, and more rural communities in the rest of the county.
The Economic Background of City Councilmembers
Who are city councilmembers? One image might resemble a national politician — someone with strong partisan attachments, perhaps a lawyer by trade, who runs for office with ambitious policy goals. Alternatively, we might picture a local community member — someone well-known in their neighborhood, running for the part-time role not as a steppingstone to higher office, but to serve their community. Perhaps council is simply a natural next step in their career path. They might be elected because Republicans and Democrats alike trust their understanding of local issues and their commitment to schools and public safety.
Bargaining for Benefits
Over the last 25 years, community benefits agreements (CBAs) have become a means for residents of low-income communities to demand a greater share of the benefits of urban development projects. CBAs are bargaining agreements that are signed by a developer that commit to delivering a range of material benefits to affected residents in exchange for community support for the proposed project. Much scholarly and broader public attention has been focused on how unequal developer-resident negotiating conditions undermine their responsiveness to community concerns. Rather than focusing on the fairness of the negotiation process, this paper focuses on how effectively CBAs are implemented throughout the duration of the agreement.
Green Dreams, Concrete Realities
With the coming of a second Trump administration, local action on climate change will be vital for making progress towards both mitigation and adaptation goals. One under-appreciated potential engine for this progress are mid-sized U.S. cities, which fall between the large cities (New York, LA), whose climate plans dominate the news and the small rural communities that are the focus of much of existing research on the green transition. Over the last two years, I’ve focused on the factors that shape climate policy outcomes in mid-sized cities and what they can teach us about local climate policy more broadly.