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We examine how political characteristics of communities explain variation in the mobilization and outcomes of the American environmental movement in 257 large American communities. In the process, we introduce our own typology of the political opportunity structure concept as a basic accounting scheme. We find that non-institutional political factors are more powerful predictors of environmental movement mobilization and outcomes than are institutional political factors. This is an important finding since non-state dimensions of the political opportunity structure are typically understudied in existing research given the overriding emphasis on formal state characteristics. Also, we find that the characteristics of allies have a more significant effect on environmental movement mobilization and outcomes than do the characteristics of opponents.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as much.– Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949/1989, p. 204)

Several theories of the new politics and new economy suggest that amenities drive urban development. Do they? Two new amenity measures affect population growth differently. Natural amenities include six components like moderate temperature and water while constructed amenities include opera, juice bars, museums, and Starbucks.

Do people move toward such amenities? Yes the total population does, controlling up to 20 variables in multiple regressions for 3,111 U.S. counties. But subpopulations differ. College graduates are more numerous where there are fewer natural but more constructed amenities. The elderly are the opposite: they increase more with natural amenities, but less with constructed amenities. Residents filing high tech patents live in locations with more of both natural and constructed amenities.

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.– Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949/1989, p. 204)

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.– Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949/1989, p. 203)

This paper charts new ground by first considering a paradigmatic shift in the nature of political decision making, driven by globalization and post-industrial trends. Second, it uses an original methodology to identify political culture and policy focus – a content analysis of some 60 websites of local authorities across Britain. We hope that the substantive results as well as the methodological lessons about how to study these issues systematically may interest British readers as well as persons confronting similar issues around the world. We particularly recommend the website analysis methodology as a relatively inexpensive procedure for conducting research globally. Many local governments worldwide now have websites – for instance over 80% of Korean local governments do, as Korean researchers reported in starting a similar content analysis.

Reports that gays are correlated with high tech job growth have generated consternation and debate. This paper reviews the key results and offers several overlapping interpretations, stressing human capital, tolerance, amenities, and statistical spuriousness. Competing hypotheses are tested using the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, 300 metro areas, 3,111 counties, and surveys of 84,989 citizens. Gays alone are generally insignificant. Still they are associated with other factors in ways that shift results across different levels: gay relations with jobs appear strong in large metro areas, but fall in smaller locations.

This chapter is one of the first to analyze how local culture – especially voluntary associations and public arts activities – can mobilize citizens and increase voter turnout. This general hypothesis is contextualized by contrasting types of elections (French presidential vs. European Union) and types of art (contemporary, patrimonial, folkloric). We test these contextualized hypotheses by analyzing demographic, cultural, and political data from 263 French communes using linear regression methods. Civic associations and some arts activities seem to increase turnout in European but not presidential elections. Further, arts types vary in their association with voting for different parties. These findings suggest the importance of civic and arts activities for future analyses of voting turnout and party voting.

In this chapter, we review how scenes theory can be related to civic participation and how the relationship differs across Seoul, Tokyo, and Chicago. The discussion begins with the major Western theory of Tocqueville/Putnam that participation drives legitimacy. However, it can be briefly relativized by introducing alternative paths. These ideas link to results from Kim (Kim, S. 2008) that show different paths for legitimacy and trust according to different political development and different cultural structure in the society. As shown in Fig. 1 of Chapter 2, most of Northwest Europe and North America supports Model 1: more participation leads to more trust. Obversely, Latin Americans have such low participation and trust that even if participation “works” for a few it misses the great majority. However, the model grows more complex when we shift to Korea, Portugal, and Eastern Europe, as the participation to trust path coefficient falls to zero: no impact. For some subgroups, the coefficient even becomes negative (Model 4). How can we codify these results and link them to our cumulative theorizing? This question cannot be answered with a simplistic generalization. Instead, we need to introduce a different conceptual framing to ask where and why and how much this happens.

In this chapter, we try to suggest various propositions to explain differences in civic participation in the three cities by using various concepts related to scenes.