What makes an urban neighborhood tick? Why do some of a city’s poorest neighborhoods have cleaner streets and less vandalism than many of its more affluent areas? The public services that make certain neighborhoods stand out are often provided by the local residents themselves—but what makes them take action?

The setting for Matthew Crenson’s book is Baltimore. In this surprising, powerful work, he finds that such neighborhood action does not arise from a strong sense of neighborliness or community feeling. Instead, it is precisely when neighbors dislike one another that some features of informal self-organization emerge. Residents’ efforts to maintain public order, health, and safety frequently spring from social chaos and discord rather than from homogeneity. In fact, Crenson discovers that in many cases community polities arise not from the cohesiveness of close-knit “urban villages” but from the social diversity, inequality, and conflict that are associated with urbanism itself.

In an era when the inability of government institutions to solve the difficulties of city living is starkly apparent, understanding unofficial neighborhood government is critically important, and it can also clarify the foundations of political order itself. Crenson’s achievement is to redefine neighborhood problem-solving as the true “grass roots” urban politics, and in doing so he reveals why Baltimore is one of the few big cities that really work in America today.

"Robert Gay's study is well done. It provides a detailed look at two different forms of popular political organization in Brazil and how they relate to the state, local people, parties, and politicians.... Gay allows the reader to catch a glimpse of the enormous varieties of ways in which popular organizations relate politics to contemporary Brazil. There is no comparable book on Latin American politics." --Scott Mainwaring, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame This urban tale of survival illustrates two versions of active, organized, aggressive participation in the political process. Vila Brasil survives by exchanging votes for favors. The president of its neighborhood association promises political candidates that the favela will vote in masse for the highest bidder. Vila Brasil has maneuvered this power to become one of the best served favelas in the region--for the moment, at least. Vidigal, on the other hand, steadfastly refuses to support candidates who campaign on boasts or promises alone. Vote-selling, or buying, is not permitted. To do well in Vidigal, a politician must talk not only about providing electricity and water in the favela, but also about wages, education, and health care over the longer term. In analyzing the favela's different responses to the popular movement that confronted the military in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the author makes a significant contribution to literature about relationships among urban poor, political elites, and the state.