strategies used by political machines to control local politics

INSTRUCTIONS: Please answer the final exam by yourself and submit it as a word document (or any other editable format). Submit your answered exam as an attachment through the assignment slot titled “Final exam submission”, available within the ‘Assignments’ section in Blackboard’s menu.

Short answer questions (100 points; 20 points each).
Answer five of the following ten questions. Provide a detailed and well thought-off answer. You can choose to answer a 6th question and get 10 extra points in the exam.

(Questions from classes 2 & 3) What were the strategies used by political machines to control local politics and what were the strategies used by the reformers to dismantle the political machines?

(Question from class 2) According to Deborah Stone’s chapter from The Policy Paradox, what is the difference between equality and equity and why is this discussion important for urban politics?

(Question from classes 4 to 6) What is the difference between official and unofficial actors? Name a few and explain their role in the policy process.

(Questions from classes 4 to 7) How did the changes in the demographics of American Cities favored the arrival of urban federal programs like the New Deal and the Great Society?

(Question from classes 5 to 7) What are some of the underlying urban policies that contributed to the urban crisis of the 1960s, and in what ways?

(Question from class 7) What is ‘agenda-setting’, and what is its role in the policy process?

(Question from classes 7 & 8) Judd and Swanstrom claim that, by the 1960s, the issue of race was tearing apart the urban coalition that the Democrats had fashioned in the 1930s. Why do they claim this and how did this contribute to the decline of the weight of cities in national politics?

(Question from class 12) What are some of the main demographic and economic factors that explain the revival of downtown areas of old industrial cities that we have seen since the 1990s?

(Question from class 13) In chapter 6 of Place Matters, the authors hold that cities in the United States face a fiscal straitjacket. What are the implications of this fiscal straitjacket for local urban politics?

(Question from class 14) What is urban liberalism, progressivism, and conservatism? Provide examples of policies that would be put forward by each of the liberal, progressive, and conservative urban politicians.