Citizen participation and municipal government in three Oklahoma communities

Abstract

A study of citizen participation and relations between citizens and their elected officials in three suburban Oklahoma City communities shows that all forms of citizen participation are very low and that elected officials are generally forced to make decisions with very little input. Modes of decision-making, dealing with conflict, and changing regimes all suggest that Dahl's model of pluralism, designed to explain the politics of 1950s New Haven, fits these 1990s suburbs nearly as well. While there are signs of growing communitarianism and civicism in these communities, these activities are supplementing, not supplanting, the plural democratic systems.