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How degree of discretion permitted in a group affects ability of bureaucrats to produce outcomes compatible with their ideas of fairness; based on interviews with 18 teachers in the Oakland public schools and 15 field office workers in the California Employment Development Department.

Analysis of interviews with 112 elected officials in 12 American cities indicates that their support for affirmative action is more strongly influenced by the justice principles they hold than by the contextual variables normally emphasized by leading urban paradigms. Allegiance to fair equal opportunity and blocking cumulative inequalities enhances support for affirmative action, whereas allegiance to maximizing aggregate utility and retaining market allocations reduces such support. These results suggest that urban paradigms should include the moral principles of participants as well as variables describing the interests that officials represent and the economic, social, political, and cultural contexts that constrain their decisions.

This paper explores the attitudes regarding affirmative action of 112 members of city councils and school boards in twelve American cities. In‐depth interviews with these officials reveal widespread support for affirmative action policies generally and for more moderate approaches to affirmative action in particular. Our analysis suggests that more aggressive forms of affirmative action—establishing quotas in hiring and setasides when awarding contracts—are especially opposed by conservatives and those in high prestige occupations and by school board members who are wary of giving priority to social justice over securing highly qualified teachers. Our analysis also suggests that extensive support for more moderate forms of affirmative action—giving preference to qualified minority candidates, requiring minority participation by companies that do business with the city, training and mentoring persons from disadvantaged groups, and taking extraordinary steps to recruit blacks and women into public offices—is rooted in concerns about morality and justice.

Explores attitudes regarding affirmative action policies and the social justice concerns and other factors influencing these attitudes; based on interviews with 120 elected officials, 1993; US.

City councils are significant, though seldom central, actors in local policy networks providing public assistance to disadvantaged residents. Mayors and council members in 12 American cities more often support than oppose public assistance initiatives. They claim that their own normative judgments are more important to their preferences and voting behavior on such matters than are public opinion, group demands, or economic considerations. While such elected officials hold a variety of justice principles, the most important of these affecting their positions on public assistance issues is the "floors" principle. A broad ethical commitment to providing social minimums enhances support for living-wage ordinances, for linking subsidies for economic development to assistance to less advantaged citizens, and for exempting spending on social services from budget cuts. We discuss the implications of these findings for major theories of urban politics and policies—collective-action theory, regime theory, and pluralism—and for advocates on behalf of the urban poor.

City councils are significant, though seldom central, actors in local policy networks providing public assistance to disadvantaged residents. Mayors and council members in 12 American cities more often support than oppose public assistance initiatives. They claim that their own normative judgments are more important to their preferences and voting behavior on such matters than are public opinion, group demands, or economic considerations. While such elected officials hold a variety of justice principles, the most important of these affecting their positions on public assistance issues is the "floors" principle. A broad ethical commitment to providing social minimums enhances support for living‐wage ordinances, for linking subsidies for economic development to assistance to less advantaged citizens, and for exempting spending on social services from budget cuts. We discuss the implications of these findings for major theories of urban politics and policies—collective‐action theory, regime theory, and pluralism—and for advocates on behalf of the urban poor.

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2011.00583.x ; This article pursues the thesis that ethics matter in urban policymaking. Interviews with 95 elected officials in 12 cities revealed the officials' support for—and opposition to—many principles of political morality and political justice. Officials regarded their ethical principles as almost as important as economic constraints on their policy decisions, and much more important than political, legal, jurisdictional, and cultural considerations. The role of ethics in the resolution of 93 issues that arose in their communities varied from minimal to decisive. On some occasions ethical considerations served mainly as justifications for policy decisions made primarily on other grounds. But more often, significant numbers of officials drew largely, and even primarily, on their own moral judgments when casting their votes on community issues. And some policies were driven by consensual moral understandings.

Examines the use of student learning assessment and learning objectives, for the purposes of regional accreditation; based on a 2000 survey of 213 US college and university departments with undergraduate and/or graduate political science courses.