Brian Adams

Brian Adams joined the political science department at SDSU in 2003 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Brian’s 2007 book Citizen Lobbyists: Local Efforts to Influence Public Policy explores citizen participation in local politics, examining how citizens try to influence local policy and what issues are most likely to generate citizen participation. On what types of issues do citizens participate? Is their participation constructive or obstructionist? On the local level citizens have a wide range of participatory opportunities: in addition to voting and other forms of “thin” participation, they can also attend local meetings, circulate petitions, and talk directly to local officials. Citizens take advantage of these opportunities and they benefit from their participation in terms of promoting favorable policy and acquiring knowledge about the policy process. But given the manner in which citizens participate and the issues they choose to influence there is little benefit to the political system as a whole.

More recently, Brian has been studying campaign finance patterns in local politics using a dataset of campaign finance in eleven cities. This research examines whether the campaign finance system undermines the capacity of local elections to enhance the democratic character of American elections more generally. As the smallest units in the American political system, localities have the potential to contribute to democratic practices by fostering accessibility to the political system, promoting competitiveness, and reducing the biases seen in state and national elections. This research project explores whether the manner in which local candidates raise and spend campaign funds undermines these goals.

Brian’s research interests generally focus on the health and dynamics of democratic practices on the local level. In addition to the questions listed above, issues of local/state/federal relations and how this impacts local democratic practices are also of interest. Does the existence of greater participatory opportunities on the local level offer a justification for local autonomy? Further, does the relatively small size of local governments support arguments in favor of direct citizen input into local policy making? Does the nature of local governance justify a fundamentally different role for citizens
than the one they perform on the national level?

Recent publications include:

Citizen Lobbyists: Local Efforts to Influence Public Policy. Temple University Press, 2007.

“Public Meetings and the Democratic Process” Public Administration Review 64, 1 (January-February 2004).

“Asian Americans and Campaign Finance in Municipal Elections” (With Ping Ren).  Social Science Journal 43 (2006): 597-615.

“Suburban Money in Municipal Elections: The Geographic Distribution of Campaign Contributions.”  Urban Affairs Review 42, 2 (2006): 267-280.

“Fundraising Coalitions in Open-Seat Mayoral Elections.”  Journal of Urban Affairs 29, 5 (2007): 481-499.

“Fund-raising Coalitions in School Board Elections.”  Education and Urban Society 40, 4 (2008): 411-427.