Urban+Regime+Theory

Title: Urban Regime Theory and CBOs Submitted by: **Diosdado G. Gica**

//Alternate Names//: **Urban Regime Theory Application, Contingency Theory, Government and Governance, Initiative Implementation, Community Based Organizations**

Central Tenets: Like contingency theory, urban regime theory incorporates all contextual factors of a given situation. Thus, urban regime or contingency theory focuses not so much on the members of organizations or coalitions, but on //how// situational variables impact their relationships. Shipps (2008) in “Urban Regime Theory and the Reform of Public Schools: Governance, Power, and Leadership” argues that regime is shaped by political, economic, and cultural contexts. And she goes to great length to delineate between external groups and elected officials/bureaucratic hierarchy, between structural and positional power, and lastly between formal leaders and potential leaders. She believes there is a definite difference between government and governance. No public entity has all the resources to accomplish its goal, especially in education where budgets are limited and support is restricted. Collaboration is key, specifically a cross-sector collaboration outside of government. City governments must work alongside other civic interests to establish its viability. In the application of urban regime theory within the YMCA of Greater New York’s New Americans Initiative (a Community-Based Organization or CBO), an organization must: 1. build trust with its community partners, 2. know its community and their needs, and build services to meet those needs, 3. prepare for organization transformational change by establishing standardization. One can argue that the YMCA New Americans Initiative’s ability to improve the lives of newcomers and immigrants not only serve the immediate needs of those new community members, but also the needs of the receiving community //as well as// their extended communities. This is central to the definition of urban regime theory, in that it considers the relationships between organizations, their coalitions and the wider community, i.e., the contingent factors that determine regime stability. And this stability is ultimately determined by its ability to successfully implement policy reform that integrates newcomers and immigrants into the organization, its partners and the wider community.

References:

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