			Home About us Contact

Institutional Configurations (institutional + configuration)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

Social Polarization and the Politics of Low Income Mortgage Lending in the United States

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2003
Jason Hackworth
ABSTRACT The structured inequalities of capital investment and disinvestment are prominent themes in critical urban and regional research, but many accounts portray ,capital' as a global, faceless and placeless abstraction operating according to a hidden, unitary logic. Sweeping political-economic shifts in the last generation demonstrate that capital may shape urban and regional processes in many different ways, and each of these manifestations creates distinct constraints and opportunities. In this paper, we analyze a new institutional configuration in the USA that is reshaping access to wealth among the poor , a policy ,consensus' to expand home-ownership among long-excluded populations. This shift has opened access to some low- and moderate-income households, and racial and ethnic minorities, but the necessary corollary is a greater polarization between those who are able to own and those who are not. We provide a critical analysis of these changes, drawing on national housing finance statistics as well as a multivariate analysis of differences between owners and renters in the 1990s in New York City. As home-ownership strengthens its role as a privatized form of stealth urban and housing policy in the USA, its continued expansion drives a corresponding reconstruction of its value for different groups, and inscribes a sharper axis of property-rights inequalities among owners and renters in the working classes. [source]

The North American Naturalization Gap: An Institutional Approach to Citizenship Acquisition in the United States and Canada,

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Irene Bloemraad
Using 1990 U.S. Census 5% PUMS and 1991 Canadian Census 3% public and 20% restricted microfiles, this article demonstrates the existence of a North American naturalization gap: immigrants living in Canada are on average much more likely to be citizens than their counterparts in the United States, and they acquire citizenship much faster than those living south of the border. Current theories explaining naturalization differences , focusing on citizenship laws, group traits or the characteristics of individual migrants , fail to explain the naturalization gap. Instead, I propose an institutional approach to citizenship acquisition. States' normative stances regarding immigrant integration (interventionist or autonomous) generate integrated or disconnected institutional configurations between government, ethnic organizations and individuals. Evidence from a case study of Portuguese immigrants living in Massachusetts and Ontario suggests that in Toronto government bureaucrats and federal policy encourage citizenship through symbolic support and instrumental aid to ethnic organizations and community leaders. In contrast, Boston area grassroots groups are expected to mobilize and aid their constituents without direct state support, resulting in lower citizenship levels. [source]

EMBEDDED CONTRASTS IN RACE, MUNICIPAL FRAGMENTATION, AND PLANNING: DIVERGENT OUTCOMES IN THE DETROIT AND GREATER TORONTO,HAMILTON REGIONS 1990,2000

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2009
A. J. JACOBS
ABSTRACT:,Since the early 1980s, scholars have debated whether or not the converging forces of globalization have disembedded city-regions from their national contexts. This study explored this question through a comparison of post-1990 growth trends in the Detroit and Greater Toronto Area,Hamilton regions (GTAH), two urban areas within the same natural region and closely linked by industrial production flows, yet politically situated within two separate Federalist states. Guided by Nested City Theory, it reveals how their dissimilar contexts for race, local autonomy, and multilocal planning have helped foster divergent spatial patterns in the two regions. In particular, provincial controls governing municipal fragmentation, Ontario's Planning Act, and subregional/microregional planning have been key embedded structures helping to limit population decline and disinvestment in GTAH core cities. In the process, this article shows how urban trajectories have remained nested within multilevel spatial and institutional configurations. Its findings also call for greater consideration of nested state/provincial factors in cross-national comparisons of cities within Federal states. Finally, its conclusion offers a starting point toward a more nuanced specific version of Nested Theory to be called the Contextualized Model of Urban,Regional Development. [source]

Order Beyond Crisis: Organizing Considerations Across the Public Service Configuration Life Cycle

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2010
Eva M. Witesman
This article responds to the preceding paper by Stephanie Moulton and Charles Wise, critiquing the dimensions that those authors use as organizing guides in the delivery of public services through public,private institutional configurations, including the evaluation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In this essay, Eva M. Witesman proposes a modification to the framework and provides suggestions for future research. [source]