ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how citizen power is exercised by citizens, and how planners and others deals with citizen power as well as mobilize citizens to help accomplish individual, organizational, or community goals. People accomplish their goals through the expression of citizen power. Direct citizen actions can take many forms: formal protests about a planning, the filing of petitions for or against a proposed action, ballot box zoning, the filing of initiatives and referenda, pressure directed at elected officials to do something, recall movements against errant public officials, and lawsuits. The chapter addresses the realities of political power as exercised by political figures and persons clearly identifiable as politicians. It suggests that some guidelines for honing the planners their own advocacy, lobbying, and political skills. A politician's decisions may be logical, reasonable, internally consistent and based on the evidence and existing laws–or they may be based on purely political considerations and expedience.
