Case Study
These three short cases are stories of city officials leading civic engagement and public participation in pursuit of public goals. From a variety of different positions in city government, the protagonists in each case departed from typical bureaucratic processes to reach out directly to the public, using unexpected methods to solicit input, raise awareness, and effect behavioral change in their communities. In the first case, the new director of the Seattle Solid Waste Utility, Diana Gale, implemented sweeping changes to the City’s solid waste collection practices. To secure compliance with new rules and regulations and tolerance for inevitable stumbles along the way, she developed a public relations capacity, became the public face of her agency, and embraced an ethos of humility and accountability. In the second case, Antanas Mockus, the eccentric mayor of Bogotá, sought to improve public safety—focusing particularly on the unregulated and lethal use of fireworks around the Christmas holiday. He tried at first to effect change through persuasion, offering citizens alternatives to fireworks and engaging vendors in the effort to reduce fireworks-related injuries and deaths. When a child suffered severe burns, however, Mockus followed through on a threat to ban firework sales and use in the City. In the third case, David Boesch, city manager of Menlo Park, California, decided to engage residents in setting priorities around cost reduction as a major budget shortfall loomed for the coming fiscal year. He hired a local firm to plan and execute a comprehensive participatory budgeting process. In a city with a sharp divide between haves and have-nots, Boesch and his partners had to take special care to ensure that everyone’s interests were heard and represented in budgetary decision-making.
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Policy Brief
Tova Wang and Melina Geser-Stark argue that while grassroots advocacy has been pivotal in advancing voting rights, it remains overshadowed by the perception that voter reform is the domain of political elites — a view this paper challenges by examining how grassroots efforts mirror modern social movements and drive the push for a more inclusive democracy.
Commentary
Additional Resource
Over the past several weeks, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the Trump Administration has been embedding staff in a range of United States federal agencies. These staff have gained access to data maintained by the federal government. This guide explains what is in the data, what DOGE is doing with it, and why it matters to all Americans.
