The need for postpositivist or antipositivist methods in the social sciences, including library and information science, is well documented. A promising alternative synthesizes critical realism and phenomenology. This method embraces ontological reality in all things, including human and social action. The ontology underlying the realist phenomenological approach recognizes, following Bhaskar, intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge (mind-independent reality and individual and social perceptions of that reality). The synthesis encompasses some particular elements, including perceptions of parts and wholes, the reconciliation of presence and absence, and the essential character of intentionality. Withholding judgment (exercising a particular kind of skepticism) enables inquirers to delve into the historicity and background of action. Potential uses of the method are manifold; some specifics are examined here.
Bounded rationality conceives of people engaging in politics as goal oriented but endowed with cognitive and emotional architectures that limit their abilities to pursue those goals rationally. Political institutions provide the critical link between micro- and macro-processes in political decision-making. They act to (a) compensate for those bounds on rationality; (b) make possible cooperative arrangements not possible under the assumptions of full or comprehensive rationality; and (c) fall prey to the same cognitive and emotional limits or canals that individual humans do. The cognitive limitations that hamper individuals are not only replicated at the organizational level but are in fact causal.
Institutional reforms to districted city councils from at-large systems are typically motivated by the desire to increase geographic and descriptive representation, enriching representation for historically excluded groups. The policy impact of descriptive representation, however, have been found to be conditional and not definitive. In this article, I explore whether institutional reform from at-large to districts has effects on a city council's policy agenda, or whether institutional constraints can quell the reform's impacts. I look to the “10-1” reform in Austin, Texas, implemented in 2015, using an original dataset collected from items in the council's 2009–2019 meeting minutes for a direct measure of the agenda. After coding each item for policy substance and testing the agenda's diversity, I find that the reform had short-term effects on the policy agenda. Instead, local government's agenda is largely driven by external problems and pragmatic needs facing the city. Consequently, the effects of reform are overwhelmed by institutional stickiness.
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