Navdeep Mathur

Citizen Deliberation in Urban Revitalization: Discursive Policy Analysis of Developmental Planning Processes in Newark Navdeep Mathur

This book outlines the discursive mechanisms of governance that provide the means for the maintenance of power of certain groups in a democratic society. Its focus is the role played by policy elites in discursively shaping and influencing institutions and processes of democracy. It shows how struggles over meanings of development map the terrain of the policymaking space and are organized through policy discourses and practices. This study uses Frank Fischer's Logic of Policy Deliberation to empirically analyze developmental policy conflicts in Newark, New Jersey. Such conflicts are highlighted in the preparation of a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and the process of updating its Master Plan, especially with reference to citizen participation and key local policymaking institutions. By analyzing how the notion of Renaissance carries multiple policy meanings to different publics in a city, it shows how the policy and plan-making process empowers and privileges particular social groups or discourse coalitions over others in the space of urban governance.