Do Residents of Low-Income Communities Trust Organizations to Speak on Their Behalf? Differences by Organizational Type

Bibliographic Data

ID6404364
AuthorsSunggeun Park (0000-0001-8942-566X, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA), Jennifer E Mosley (0000-0002-9292-6710, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, corresponding author), Colleen M Grogan (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA)
Year2018
Volume54
Issue1
Pages137-164
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Affairs Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1078-0874 • E-ISSN: 1552-8332
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1078087416669059
OpenAlexW2522661045
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited43

Low-income people of color in urban communities have been found to suffer from high levels of political inequality and poor political representation. To make policy more responsive and accountable, neighborhood organizations are often solicited to serve as informal community representatives in local decision-making processes. Given this reliance on nonelected representatives, we ask, Do community residents believe neighborhood organizations are legitimate representatives of their interests? Using survey data from residents of the South Side of Chicago, this article demonstrates that residents’ trust in organizations as representatives varies significantly by organizational type. Specifically, community organizations, religious congregations, and schools are rated as more trustworthy to speak on behalf of the community than local elected officials. These findings hold relatively constant across a variety of individual- and community-level differences, implying that this preference is widespread and may extend to other vulnerable urban communities in the United States

Community organization · Community organizing · Economics · Inequality · Political science · Politics · Preference · Public relations · Representation (politics · Sociology · Trustworthiness · Variety (cybernetics · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering · Psychology · Public Administration · Social Capital and Networks · Social Psychology

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