ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on non-electoral political transactions (i.e. political demands) and is concerned with the causes and effects of localised political involvement in British and North American cities. In the terminology of systems analysis, the chapter is both a study of environmental inputs (i.e. demands) into local political systems and of political outputs. It includes the processes of aggregation and articulation of political demands, and the means by which they are processed and sometimes converted into official decisions. Three key concepts and their causal interrelationships will be investigated — neighbourhood participation, political demand making and local outputs. The undoubted importance of non-spatial factors in explaining social and spatial patterns of political participation (notably socio-economic status) notwithstanding, the chapter explores the precise impact of residential location. Issues such as whether the concept of distance decay operates in relation to localised threats to neighbourhood amenity and the resulting patterns of participation are considered.
