Marc Parés, Sonia M. Ospina, and Joan Subirats, Social Innovation and Democratic Leadership: Communities and Social Change from Below (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2017). 288 pp. $99.46 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781785367878

• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019
• Author: Eli Turkel
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13062

Book Reviews 447

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 3, pp. 447–449. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13062.

Reviewed by: Eli Turkel

University of Delaware

Marc Parés, Sonia M. Ospina, and Joan Subirats, Social Innovation

and Democratic Leadership: Communities and Social Change

from Below (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2017). 288 pp.

$99.46 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781785367878

Parés, Ospina, and Subirats’s (2017) conceptual

development of civic capacity fits into a long

lineage of urban governance scholarship

concerned with the ecology of urban politics (media,

business, government, general public) (Dahl 1961;

Long 1958). Coinciding with the decimation of

the American industrial economy in the 1970s and

into the 1980s (Bluestone and Harrison 1982),

studies on patterns of urban governance morphed

from the question of whether elite rule skews urban

policy (Dahl 1961) to the question of how to design

institutions capable of generating responses to urban

crisis, such as reformulating the fundamental structure

of local urban economies (Stone 1989).

The conversation shifted because circumstances

evolved. The rise of the multilocational firm in the

1980s decreased business involvement in matters of

local governance because the incentive structures of

such firms were far less tied to individual locations

in which they happened to have offices. The new

business incentive structure led scholars to stop asking

about whether and what effect business domination

had on local politics and start asking whether and

what contributes to business interest in local politics.

The shift in scholarly inquiry raised an important

question because, while the incentive structure

decreased the likelihood of business involvement in

local politics, the institution of business had captured

a larger portion of resources necessary to accomplish

social goals (Stone 1989).

In light of these contextual changes, scholars such

as Stone (2001) and Safford (2009) compared the

capacity of a municipality’s ability to manufacture

responses to urban crisis in order to establish

characteristics that correlate with success, which

urban policy makers can attempt to replicate.

Although scholars question the authenticity of

government/business collaboration in times of crisis

(i.e., natural disaster, an economic downturn, or

institutional inertia) (Gendron 2006), the consensus

among urban governance scholars is that substantial

involvement of business in local politics is necessary

for governance processes to produce meaningful

reform. However, Briggs’s (2008) work on civic

capacity in an international context demonstrates that

there is no archetypical institutional arrangement that

produces successful governance. Rather, the secret

sauce is the more elusive element of developing trust

among parties involved in reform efforts.

In a post-2008 global recession context, Parés,

Ospina, and Subirats (2017) take on the ambitious

task of attempting to both describe how urban

circumstances have changed and what that means for

civic capacity. Parés and Subirats, professors at the

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Ospina,

a professor at New York University, operationalize

these questions by comparing the work of nonprofit

organizations in urban neighborhoods in New York

City and Barcelona that are constantly facing threats

of gentrification and social exclusion (Bushwick, the

South Bronx, Nor Barris Nord, and Sants).

The work is divided into two sections. The first

section describes the context of urban crisis and

develops the authors’ conceptualization. Beyond

providing an enjoyable seminar in recent social

science theory (social innovation, social capital, civic

capacity, leadership, and resiliency), the authors’

conceptualization is noteworthy because of its ability

to explain the concepts individually, as well as explain

how these concepts relate to one another in a way

that demonstrates their efficacy for understanding

contemporary urban affairs.

Parés, Ospina, and Subirats (2017) define civic

capacity as the ability to “articulate governmental and

non-governmental actors concerned with collective

problems” (p. xviii). This is a significant definition

because it implies that communal trust is necessary

in order to manufacture responses to urban crisis, as

reflected in the core teaching of past civic capacity

scholars. Instead of referring to “governmental and

non- governmental actors concerned with collective

Eli Turkel is a third-year doctoral student

in urban affairs and public policy at the

University of Delaware, focusing on the

civic technology movement in the United

States. His civic technology movement

research is scholarly as well as practical.

He endeavors to understand the forces

propelling the movement and engage with

his community to further the movement. His

dissertation focuses on the location, levels,

and correlations of the diffusion of the civic

technology movement. His is a co-organizer

of Open Data Delaware, which provides

spaces for community members to work on

individual and collective projects, organizes

hackathons, and hosts trainings.

E-mail: eturkel@udel.edu

Book Reviews

Galia Cohen, Editor