Neighborhood government

Advocacy of neighborhood government should be based on a careful assessment of possible dangers and deficiencies, as well as merits. The obstacles to increasing neighborhood power include the costs of community organizing in terms of time and effort, community conflict, city-neighborhood conflict, and general political conflict. To persuade individuals to engage in collective action, it is necessary that the rewards of such action be greater than the personal costs. Serious participation is likely to occur only when neighborhood government programs offer visible rewards and work to solve concrete problems. There is a specific awareness that many unions and politicians will fight neighborhood government and that they have the power to damage or destroy it. There is also the sense that, whereas there has been success in developing community structures, it has been difficult to move government toward decentralization, toward more flexible administrative procedures.To appear in a forthcoming book,The City in the Seventies (edited by Robert K. Yin), to be published by F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.