Publication Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Swedlow, Brendon

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of Political Science

Abstract

How does the political culture of local governments influence the type and extent of procedural justice in sustainability policy processes? Answering this question is important because political culture is potentially a significant influence on local governments that could be better conceptualized and theorized and because public participation in sustainability policy processes is central to the demands of procedural justice in environmental justice (EJ) movements. This dissertation seeks to bring a new conception and new measures of political culture to the study of policy making by local governments as well as to contribute to developing the conceptualization and measurement of public participation in the policy processes of those governments.

There are large gaps between public participation as traditionally conceived and the ideal of procedural justice. In EJ research, procedural justice is a more demanding concept than public participation due to its emphases on equal and authentic participation (Gould 1996; Lake 1996; Young 2002). This dissertation sought to measure the extent to which public participation in sustainability policy processes in local governments is equal and authentic. To measure equal participation, this dissertation asked to what extent local governments select three types of public participants, including lay citizens, randomly selected participants, and underrepresented groups, in sustainability policy processes. To measure authentic participation, this dissertation asked to what extent local governments adopt two strategies of delegating the power to the public, including cogoverning with public and delegating direct power in final decisions, in sustainability policy processes.

Study of political culture in the United States has been dominated by Daniel Elazar’s conception. As applied by him in his seminal Cities of the Prairie (1970) and subsequent work, political culture is considered as affiliations to religious groups or as intertwined with individual interest and social economic status, rather than originating in social and political relations, which are the core of power relations, a central concept in political science (McClurg and Young 2011, 39; Favre, Swedlow, and Verweij 2019). Cultural Theory (CT), developed by Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, and others (Douglas 1999; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Schwarz and Thompson 1990; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990; Wildavsky 1998, 2006), conceptualizes and derives political cultures of egalitarianism, hierarchy, individualism, and fatalism from two dimensions of social and political relations, which have been used to study organizational culture and its influences (Hood 1998; Bellamy, Perri, Raab, Warren, and Heeney 2008; Hood 1998; Lodge and Wegrich 2011; Maesschalck 2004; Matheson 2017; Swedlow 2014). Elazar’s conception of political culture also has various limitations such as an inductively generated typology of cultures that are arguably overcome by CT.

Using CT, I conceptualized and operationalized political culture as political relations and relational bias; that is, as organizational culture and local officials’ cultural biases. I used original survey data from Illinois municipalities and tested how organizational culture and local officials’ cultural biases influence the two dimensions of procedural justice identified above. I found that organizational cultural variables explain both the variety of participants and the power delegated to the public, while other variables can, at best, explain only the variety of participants. As hypothesized, egalitarianism influences some procedural justice components more than others and fatalism influences them less than other cultures. However, contrary to expectations, fatalism is more influential in randomly selecting participants than hierarchy.

This dissertation also disentangled nuances in the influences of hierarchical and egalitarian organizational cultures by distinguishing egalitarianism from inclusive hierarchy and inclusive from exclusive hierarchy. (Inclusive and exclusive hierarchy both value hierarchical order but inclusive hierarchy is more willing to help the less fortunate; Swedlow, 2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff, 2009). As expected, compared to fatalism, local governments with inclusive hierarchical culture are more likely to recruit lay citizens and compared to exclusive hierarchical culture local governments with inclusive hierarchical culture are more likely to cogovern with the public. By contrast, both inclusive and exclude hierarchical are reluctant to trade order for equality and inclusive hierarchy has a more moderate intentions in sharing power with the public than egalitarianism. As I expected, compared to egalitarianism, both inclusive and exclusive hierarchical culture are less likely to cogovern with the public and delegate direct power to the public. However, contrary to expectation, compared to fatalism, local governments with inclusive hierarchical culture are less likely to recruit randomly selected participants, and local governments with exclusive hierarchical culture are less likely to co-govern with the public.

This dissertation fails to find a significant influence of local officials’ cultural bias on local governments’ procedural justice commitment in sustainability policy processes. However, this dissertation found that including organizational culture can improve model fit and explanatory power for most procedural justice components (both individually and in an index), while including the cultural bias of local officials led to poor model fit and explanatory power.

Extent

169 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

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Text

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