Politics in Global Cities: Los Angeles Charter Reform and the New Social Movements

In this paper I analyze the recently completed struggle to rewrite the city charter of Los Angeles. I read charter reform in the context of an emergent literature on politics in global cities. That literature emphasizes the rising importance in global city politics of new social movements among marginalized populations. It argues that the new movements are increasingly playing a central role in global city politics. In the struggle over charter reform in Los Angeles, however, such movements were conspicuously absent. This finding does not invalidate the literature on new movements in global city politics, but it does point to the need for more detailed research into just what role such movements will play in global city politics. In particular, the case suggests that both formal political structures and electoral politics remain significant features of global city politics. If the new social movements are to have a lasting and transforming impact on global city politics, part of their project will have to engage such formal politics. In this paper I demonstrate the need for more research that investigates how and why new social movements engage the local state and electoral politics.