Desegregation, Litigation, and Resource Mobilization / David L. Colton.

This document attempts to show that litigation serves to transform the way in which educators construct their conceptions of the financial aspects of desegregation. First viewed as a cause of retrenchment, desegregation later becomes the catalyst for resource redistribution and program innovation. As a corollary of this resource mobilization process, the customary budget channels are bypassed. New bureaucracies, budgets, and programs are overlaid on old ones, resulting in significant shifts in the power that accompanies access to funding sources. Litigation accounts for the deviation of desegregation budgeting from the normal budgeting process. In sum, the courts have become levers for mobilizing funds for schools. In effect, desegregation litigation introduces into an urban school system a new budget system, complete with new actors, new paradigms for thinking about resource allocation, and new avenues of revenue generation. This budgetary system will presumably merge eventually with the established system. The paper concludes that by observation of decision-makers' conceptualizations of budgetary categories, researchers may better understand the politics of management in an era of austerity. (PB)

Researchers. ericd

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