Terry Clark

This book is an international comparison of third sectors. It builds on recent work on the origins, dynamics, and effects of civil society in different parts of the world; we include the political-historical background and third sector interactions with state institutions, as well as analysis of how those dynamics vary by region. We then examine functions, impacts, and composition of the nonprofit sector for six key countries.
Foundational differences in religious and political tradition across these different countries create different types of meanings for third sector organizations. Contexts shift drastically, internationally and over time. A children’s art group, for example, means something very different in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb than in a poor Lima neighborhood. Chinese civic organizations, for example, follow the predominantly Asian model of being funded largely by government, and are linked to goals of national politics. This contrasts with Western experience of the third sector, which has often explicitly challenged government objectives. Most existing studies are of one or a few countries; moving to a global perspective adds considerable insights in highlighting variations, and offers policy options of borrowing across national systems. We hope in this book to encourage others to look more sensitively at different national systems.

CSOs (civil society organizations), NPOs (nonprofit organizations), NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), INGOS (international non-governmental organizations), and formal and informal associations are part of an important, relatively new sector that is now a world political force. Though the components of this “third sector” vary by country, their net effect is increasingly important across the globe. This third sector plays a critical role in creating values worldwide, through its work in service delivery, advocacy, cultural programs, and social movements. The third sector includes different types of relief and welfare organizations, innovation organizations, public service organizations, economic development, grassroots mobilization, advocacy groups, and social networks (Clark 1991:40–41).

This study began at an invitation from the Chinese government in 2009 and was published in Mandarin in 2011. This English version incorporates new material for a more global audience, emphasizing the presence of different institutional logics born of different cultural traditions and historical trajectories. The book’s history thus led to a national policy-oriented perspective informing the broader theoretical observations below. As such, it is our hope that it constitutes a useful guide for a wide variety of audiences, ranging from policymakers who may find it useful to locate their work within a broader context, to academics looking for a comparative frame to situate their own scholarship, to third-sector practitioners, who may find reflections and insights germane to their careers.

Are you sceptical about the importance of arts and culture, especially about their possible impact on politics and the economy? This volume outlines a new framework for analysis of democratic participation and economic growth and explores how these new patterns work around the world. The new framework joins two past traditions; however, their background histories are clearly separate. Democratic participation ideas come mostly from Alexis de Tocqueville, while innovation/bohemian ideas driving the economy are largely inspired by Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs. New developments building on these core ideas are detailed in the first two sections of this volume. But these chapters in turn show that more detailed work within each tradition leads to an integration of the two: participation joins innovation. This is the main theme in the book's third section, the buzz around arts and culture organizations, and how they can transform politics, economics, and social life.

Selectively using Tocqueville, many social scientists suggest that civic participation
increases democracy. We go beyond this neo-Tocquevillian model in three ways. First, to
capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation;
results change if we analyze separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a
dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we
study more dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their
associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Programme
and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian
model is positive, negative, or zero in different subcultures and contexts that we explicate

Presented to Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 2-5, 2009.

Political legitimacy can be attained by other means than voting or citizen participation. In addition to these conventional methods of guaranteeing legitimacy, we contend that alternative modes of political legitimacy are emerging all over the world. Among the emergent forms of legitimacy one finds material and symbolic activities connecting to citizens’ values: China’s ongoing economic growth or Bogota’s late 1990s civic culture program are examples. Instead of relying on citizens embracing the rules of political participation of representative democracy, many political leaders at local and national levels are achieving political legitimacy by fulfilling citizens’ material and symbolic demands. The arts can be used to make politics more theatrical.

Recent scholarship from political science, urban studies, and sociology conceptualizes the city as a space of decentralized democracy – a view emphasizing localization, participation, difference, and anti-hierarchical organizational form.  Instead of conceiving the city as a place of atomized individuals and a locale for market exchange, this alternative framework recognizes the city’s role as “civitas” – a “space of active democratic citizenship” and “full human realization” based on open and free encounter and exchange with difference.  The current research emerges from and fills a need within this perspective by examining how local urban contexts undergird and bolster contemporary anti-systemic movements (CASMs).  Theory elaborates how urban density, land-use mix, and connectivity generate and enable interaction with the social diversity fundamental to decentralized and anti-hierarchical movements.  In addition, theory also examines how urban walking mediates the relationships between these urban contextual traits and CASMs.  Empirical analysis will investigate the direct effects of density, connectivity, land-use mix, and urban walking on contemporary anti-systemic movement activity (measured as human rights, environmental, and social advocacy groups), as well as employing the Sobel and Freedman-Schatzkin tests to assess mediation.  Preliminary analysis suggests positive relationships between urban contextual traits and social movement variables.

Where and how does arts activity drive neighbourhood revitalization? We explore the impact of arts establishments on income in US zip codes, nationally and across quantiles (from four to seven subgroups) of zip codes stratified by disadvantage (based on income and ethnicity/race). We focus on what is new here: how neighbourhood scenes or the mixes of amenities mediate relationships between the arts and income. One dramatic finding is that more bohemian/hip neighbourhoods tend to have less income, contradicting the accounts from Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida and others. Arts and bohemia generate opposing effects, which emerge if we study not a few cases like Greenwich Village, but use more careful measures and larger number of cases. Some arts factors that distinctly influence neighbourhood income include the number of arts establishments; type and range of arts establishments; levels of disadvantage in a neighbourhood; and specific pre and coexisting neighbourhood amenities. Rock, gospel and house music appeal to distinct audiences. Our discussion connects this vitalizing role for arts activity to broader community development dynamics. These overall results challenge the view that the arts simply follow, not drive, wealth, and suggest that arts-led strategies can foster neighbourhood revitalization across a variety of income, ethnic, and other contexts.


The global rise of arts and culture is transforming local politics. Though new to many academic urban analysts, this is a commonplace for many mayors and local policymakers around the world. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of urban politics. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the politics of cultural policy alongside the typical political economic concerns in the urban politics and development literatures. Our framework synthesizes several research streams that combine in global factors driving the articulation of culture into city politics. This frames our studies of the local processes through which this articulation occurs on the ground in Toronto and Chicago.

This paper elaborates a general theory of scenes as multi-dimensional complexes of
meaning embedded in material, local practices. It outlines techniques for measuring
scenes empirically and shows how certain types of scenes provide environments in
which new social movement (NSM) organizations (like human rights and
environmental groups) tend to thrive. However universal and cosmopolitan the
10 content of NSM goals, they appear to get much of their energy and support from
the qualities that inhere in concrete local contexts.

NOTE: the pdf appears garbled if viewed on the academia site, but if you download it should be legible. This chapter discusses a new approach to the study of urban place, "the scenes ap proach." While this approach is not exclusively applicable to cities, this chapter is focused on urban areas. Businesses and institutions, people and practices join to produce areas with distinct aesthetics-hip, edgy, refined, glamorous, etc. These qualities make it possi ble to move about a city as if it were a scenic route, to discover the styles of life each has to offer. This chapter is intended as a first effort to extend scenes thinking to historic preservation and public heritage practice (and vice versa) and we invite critical dialogue and collaboration. Keywords: historic preservation, scenes approach, cultural heritage, urban, built environment, practice

This chapter builds on past work to examine the distinctive ways in which ethnic restaurants help to define the contemporary scenescape in US cities. It uses the example of restaurants to illustrate how to apply and extend a scenes approach. Restaurants in general and ethnically themed restaurants are crucial components of many cities and communities' consumer offerings. They often make the scene. After briefly reviewing some general principles of the scenes perspective, the authors discuss ethnic neighborhoods and the role of consumption venues such as restaurants in defining their identity. The authors stress multiple ways that ethnically themed amenities and local populations may overlap in various contexts, as well as how they can join with other dimensions of local scenes. These ideas are illustrated by examining multiple types of ethnic restaurants across all US zip codes, paying particular attention to the degree to which they correspond with coethnic residential populations, and how this varies by group and city. The authors also investigate the types of scenes typical of cosmopolitan areas that offer diverse ethnic cuisines.

More traditionally associated with hogs (“Chicago: Hog Butcher to the World”), clientelism (“We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent,”), and industrialism (“Chicago, City of Broad Shoulders”), Chicago lacks a strong tradition of major civic and city government expenditure and interest in arts, culture, and amenities. As late as 1975, Saul Bellow wrote, “there were beautiful and moving things in Chicago, but culture was not one of them” (Bellow 1975: 69). In the wake of major investments in Chicago’s cultural infrastructure, by 2009, the Director of the National Endowment of the Arts could say: “Mayor Daley should be the No. 1 hero to everyone in this country who cares about art” (in The Theater Loop, 2009). In 1976, Milton Rakove described Chicago as “Dick Daley’s town. Uncultured and parochial...not an Athens, neither a Rome, nor a London, and never a Paris” (Rakove 1976: 41). In 2003 Mayor Daley II had the street level bus stops and rail entrances redesigned to match those in Paris. What happened in between, how did local politicians drive this process, and how has Chicago politics changed?

This chapter investigates the consequences of local ‘scenes’ for urban development. It treats the particular constellation of amenities in a place – cafes, galleries, pubs, music venues, fashion houses, dance clubs, antique shops, restaurants, fruit stands, convenience stores and the like – as constituting the local scene. These constellations of amenities define the scene by making available an array of meaningful experiences to residents and visitors. Scenes give a sense of drama, authenticity and ethical significance to a city’s streets and strips. Depending on its particular configuration of amenities, a vibrant scene can transform an urban area into a theatrical place to see and be seen (glamorously, transgressively or in other ways), an authentic place to explore and affirm local, ethnic or national identities (among others), an ethical place to share and debate common values and ideals (such as tradition or self expression). The availability of these experiences varies substantially across and even within cities and regions. These variations have significant consequences for urban economies and populations.

We propose several hypotheses and analyses about scenes as one factor that contributes to ‘creative cities’. We situate these propositions within a broader universe of ideas about the significance of creativity. First, we offer a brief overview of the processes involved in what we call the institutionalization and internalization of creativity. This is a process whereby creativity moves from the margins to the centre of basic conceptions of human action, bringing with it special attention to the specific mechanisms through which creative activity is more likely to occur in one place and moment rather than another. Second, we briefly review some classic and contemporary hypotheses about what these multiple mechanisms might be, such as education, technology, density and the like. Third, we propose adding scenes as a distinctly important factor of creativity.
We offer a brief introduction to our scenes perspective on urban development, before proposing and testing several hypotheses about how scenes drive urban development.