Playing the Neoliberal Game: Why Community Leaders Left Party Politics to Partisan Activists

Abstract

Community leaders increasingly avoid grassroots parties, a tendency that polarizes politics by leaving ideological activists in control. This article synthesizes urban and civil society theory to develop possible explanations, evaluating them via a mixed-methods community study, and concludes that leaders avoid politics because it stigmatizes them within their politically structured competition, or game, for community esteem. Postwar federalism enhanced locals’ control by sheltering firms from outside acquisitions and transferring discretionary grants to local bodies, thus creating an arena that privileged “fighters” who engaged publicly by forming rigid, oppositional factions. Neoliberal reforms made leaders dependent on mobile firms and competitive funding streams, conditions that elevate “partners” who avoid conflict and form flexible place-marketing coalitions to community prominence. Fighters view politics as consistent with their community personae, whereas partners fear that political divisiveness will undermine their community esteem and are unable to mobilize partisan coalitions.