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

本文考察了公民能力推动改革的程度，从而指导解决哪些问题以及提供的解决方案的性质。斯通（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，这些利益相关者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。前者涉及社会各界在多大程度上团结一致，持续支持学校改革和改善教育机会和表现的相关工作；后者涉及利益相关者，或者斯通所说的城市制度，在多大程度上对当前的教育问题有共同的理解。虽然斯通研究公民能力和城市制度的方法为概念化城市教育改革提供了一个新的重要框架，但它不允许发展一种推断理论，既能预测学校改革对社区的影响，也能预测社区对学校改革的影响。公民能力、制度、社会网络和社区组织之间的相互关系既没有明确规定，也没有进行实证分析。例如，什么样的制度变化与公民参与地方机构和地方决策的增加有关？什么样的组织间联系能促进公民参与？这些关系与学校改革有什么关系？此外，实证方面的挑战依然存在。大多数研究没有纵向基础来跟踪公民能力随时间的变化，限于单个城市的个案研究，或未能充分实施关键概念。因此，我们继续在理论上为城市制度理论构建案例，我们未能检验其实证有效性。本论文解决了这些理论和实证的挑战。在理论上，它提供了第一个解释公民能力发展及其对改革成功影响的理论。特别是，该学生提出了学校改革的社会网络理论，该理论建立在斯通的工作基础上，并增加了社会学理论的维度。这个理论框架允许学生回答以下问题：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促进或削弱城市发展公民教育改革能力的？从经验上看，学生衡量——随着时间的推移——社区间组织、合作和学校改革互动的水平。通过汇集来自多个来源的数据，学生将测量公民合作和公民能力等难以捉摸的概念，从而揭示社区组织和学校之间的关系是如何构建的，社区参与和支持的水平如何促进社区的社会组织，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.