Previous research has indicated that socio-economic and racial characteristics of an individual's environment influence not only group consciousness and solidarity, but also affect his or her views toward minority or majority groups. Missing from this research is a consideration of how context, social interaction, and interracial experiences combine to shape more general psychological orientations such as generalized trust. In this study we address this gap in the literature by conducting a neighborhoodlevel analysis that examines how race, racial attitudes, social interactions, and residential patterns affect generalized trust. Our findings suggest not only that the neighborhood context plays an important role in shaping civic orientations, but that the diversity of interaction settings is a key condition for the development of generalized trust.

While the possible decline in the level of social capital in the United States has received considerable attention by scholars such as Putnam and Fukuyama, less attention has been paid to the local activities of citizens that help define a nation's stock of social capital. Scholars have paid even less attention to how institutional arrangements affect levels of social capital. We argue that giving parents greater choice over the public schools their children attend creates incentives for parents as “citizen/consumers” to engage in activities that build social capital. Our empirical analysis employs a quasi-experimental approach comparing parental behavior in two pairs of demographically similar school districts that vary on the degree of parental choice over the schools their children attend. Our data show that, controlling for many other factors, parents who choose when given the opportunity are higher on all the indicators of social capital analyzed. Fukuyama has argued that it is easier for governments to decrease social capital than to increase it. We argue, however, that the design of government institutions can create incentives for individuals to engage in activities that increase social capital.

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This study focuses on the determinants and effects of parent involvement in schools, in the context of urban school districts, and particularly with regard to the schools that serve Latino students. Three research questions are investigated in this article: (1) What are schools doing to support parents, foster involvement and engagement in their children's schools, and generally create strong parent-school relations? (2) How effective are schools at fostering parent involvement? (3) Do schools with more effective parent involvement practices and greater parent participation perform at higher levels than those with less effective practices and lower levels of parent involvement? Data on Latino representation on Local School Councils (LSCs), school-level demographic and performance indicators, and information on effective school organization, parent involvement, and school practices regarding outreach and engagement with parents and communities are used to investigate these questions. The empirical analysis demonstrates that in addition to previously established aspects of effective school organization, governing arrangements and Latino political incorporation play a critical role in building stronger, more supportive school-parent relations and in encouraging higher levels of parent involvement in formal school activities. Moreover, these practices and relations were found to have important implications for Latino student performance. Copyright 2006 by The Policy Studies Organization.

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In this study we revisit the question of black representation on city councils and school boards using a novelO ver the past several decades, social scientists interested in questions of race and representation in American politics have paid considerable attention to black representation on city councils and local school boards. These investigations have focused almost exclusively on two explanatory factors: the voting strength of the black population and local electoral institutions. This focus is predicated on conventional assumptions that given a choice, black voters prefer electing black candidates and that blacks come closer to achieving proportional representation as their share of the electorate increases. Electoral institutions are believed to condition the "seats/population" relationship with at-large election (AL) systems impeding the election of minorities, particularly in the South where racial voting has been most pervasive.Extant research espouses this relatively simple model of representation despite mixed empirical results. Specifically, although many studies find that the likelihood of attaining proportionality increases as the share of the black population increases and that blacks are less proportionally represented on city councils and school boards when The authors wish to thank three anonymous referees and the editor for their comments and suggestions.elected at large rather than from single-member districts (SMD), important exceptions exist (Alozie and Manganaro 1993;Welch 1990;Welch and Karnig 1978). Further, despite similarities in the models and methods employed to study black council and board representation, results suggest that blacks are more proportionally represented on boards (Meier and England 1984;Welch and Karnig 1978).More generally, the literature reflects two enduring puzzles. First, given the higher incidence of AL arrangements in municipalities and school districts and the fact that blacks are a minority in most jurisdictions in America, what accounts for blacks' representational gains over the past several decades? Second, if electoral structure and voting strength play identical roles in council and board contests, why do empirical studies find more "equitable" representation on boards than councils? Do mechanisms other than the size of the black population and SMD arrangements matter for black representation in local governing bodies?

Traditional studies of minority incorporation focus on the redistribution of public resources that purportedly follows black gains in representation. The present study departs from this approach by focusing on the attitudinal effects of black leadership. Two research questions guide this study: To what extent do blacks' assessments of neighborhood services and conditions stem from black representation in local executive and legislative offices? Are these attitudinal effects rooted in policy and service delivery outcomes? Employing survey data from 3,000 blacks embedded in 52 cities and 53 school districts, this study reveals that blacks report higher levels of satisfaction with their neighborhood conditions, police services, and public schools when represented by blacks in city hall and on school boards and that these evaluations are most positive when improvements in local services are conspicuous. Overall, these findings extend conventional conceptualizations of substantive benefits and challenge more pessimistic accounts regarding the effects of black representation in local politics.

In this article I examine citizen participation in the realm of local service delivery, addressing two fundamental questions. First, in what ways do individual-and neighborhood-level factors shape citizens' perceptions of crime and education as serious problems? Second, what leads individuals to get involved in activities and organizations related to these two local public services? I examine these question by merging two distinct strands of research-the theory of coproduction and studies of political participation-and conduct an empirical analysis using survey data from the 1989 Detroit Area Study (Rosenstone 1989) and tract-level data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing. My findings underscore the importance of formal recruitment, neighborhood context, and incentives in understanding why individuals participate in local efforts to improve schools and mitigate crime.