Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Social Networks, Civic Capacity and Urban School Reform: A Multi-Level Analysis

本文探讨了公民能力在多大程度上推动了改革，从而指导了哪些问题得到解决，以及所提供的解决方案的性质。 Stone（1998）认为，公民能力是动员各种利益相关者支持社区范围内的事业。在大多数大型城市系统中，这些利益攸关方包括专业教育工作者、家长、商业部门、社区行为者，在某些情况下还包括市政厅。公民能力的基石是公民动员和共同理解。前者涉及社会各部门在何种程度上共同持续支持学校改革和有关努力，以改善教育机会和业绩;后者涉及到利益相关者，或者斯通也提到的城市政权，虽然斯通对公民能力和城市制度的研究方法提供了一个新的重要的城市教育改革的概念框架，它不允许发展一种推论理论，既预测学校改革对社区的影响，也预测社区对学校改革的影响。公民能力、制度、社交网络和社区组织之间的相互关系既没有明确规定，也没有系统分析。例如，什么样的制度变化与公民参与地方制度和地方政策制定有关？哪些类型的组织间联系促进公民参与？这些关系与学校改革有何关系？此外，经验方面的挑战依然存在。大多数研究没有一个纵向的基础来跟踪随着时间的推移公民能力的变化，仅限于单个城市的案例研究，或未能充分运作的关键概念。因此，我们继续在理论上为城市政权理论构建案例，我们未能检验它的表面有效性。 从理论上讲，它提供了第一个解释性理论的发展公民能力及其影响的成功改革。特别是，学生提出了学校改革的社会网络理论，建立在斯通的工作，并增加了社会学理论的维度。这个理论框架允许学生解决以下问题：合作是如何建立的？随着时间的推移，哪些类型的关系是建立的，哪些是维持的？各种人口、政治和社会因素是如何影响或削弱城市发展公民教育改革能力的？从经验上讲，学生衡量-随着时间的推移-学校改革的社区间组织、合作和互动的水平。通过汇集来自多个来源的数据，学生将衡量公民合作和公民能力的难以捉摸的概念，从而阐明社区组织和学校之间的关系是如何构建的问题，社区参与和支持的水平如何有助于社区的社会组织，以及系统的学校改革如何影响这些关系和过程。

This dissertation examines the extent to which civic capacity drives reform and thereby directs which problems are tackled and the nature of the solutions offered. Stone (1998) maintains that civic capacity is the mobilization of various stakeholders in support of a community wide cause. These stakeholders in most large urban systems include professional educators, parents, the business sector, community-based actors, and, in some cases, city hall. The building blocks for civic capacity are civic mobilization and shared understanding. The former addresses the degree to which various sectors of the community come together in sustained support of school reform and related efforts to improve educational opportunities and performance; the latter involves the extent to which stakeholders, or what Stone also references as the urban regime, share a common understanding of the education problem at hand.While Stone's approach to civic capacity and urban regimes provides a new and important framework for conceptualizing urban education reform, it does not permit the development of an inferential theory that predicts both the effects of school reform on the community and the effects of the community on school reform. Interrelationships among civic capacity, institutions, social networks, and community organizations have neither been clearly specified nor analyzed empirically.For example, what kinds of institutional changes are related to increased citizen participation in localinstitutions and local policy-making? What types of interorganizational linkages foster citizen participation? How are these relationships related to school reform? In addition, empirical challenges remain. Most studies do not have a longitudinal base with which to track changes in civic capacity over time, are limited to single city case studies, or fail to fully operationalize key concepts. Thus, we have continued to build the case for the urban regime theory in theory, we have failed to test itsempirical validity.This dissertation addresses these theoretical and empirical challenges. Theoretically, it offers the first explanatory theory of the development of civic capacity and its effect on the success of reforms. In particular, the student proposes a Social Network Theory of School Reform that builds upon Stone's work and adds dimensions from sociological theories. This theoretical framework allows the student to address the following questions: How is cooperation established? What types of relationships are forged and which are maintained over time? How do various demographic, political, and social factors contribute to or diminish a city's ability to develop civic capacity foreducation reform? Empirically, the student measures --- over time --- the levels of inter-community organization, cooperation and interaction for school reform. By pooling together data from multiple sources, the student will measure the elusive concepts of civic cooperation and civic capacity, and thus shed new light on questions of how relations among community organizations and schools are structured, how levels of community participation and support contribute to the social organization of communities, and how systemic school reform influences these relationships and processes.