This paper describes and analyzes the nature of the New Orleans urban regime focusing on the first term of Sidney Barthelemy, the second black mayor of New Orleans (1986–1990). First, because the authors believe that regime theory needs to be more carefully theorized in relation to racial politics, they begin by discussing the changing relationship of blacks to the prevailing New Orleans regime. Second, in analyzing this racial politics, they focus on the relationship between the evolving structure of the electoral coalition, governing coalition development strategies, and the stability of the governing regime. They conclude that a caretaker regime is very difficult to maintain in a city with a recent majority black electorate. Such an electoral coalition has a tendency to support either a progressive or corporate regime. Finally, the authors pay particular attention to the development of the consensus‐seeking para‐apparatus, its relationship to racial politics, and its affect on development policy, governing coalition politics, and regime transition.

Urban politics is a multidisciplinary field, in other words a number of bits — so to speak — of different disciplines work on it. While those in political science might claim to produce the bulk of the work in this field, others in anthropology, economics, human geography, planning, social policy and sociology can also claim to be making a contribution. The introduction situates the six sections comprising this essay, in which contributors discuss what their respective disciplines bring to the wider field of ‘urban politics’ and highlight some possible areas for future work. Résumé La politique urbaine est un champ multidisciplinaire auquel contribuent, dirons‐nous, des «bouts» de plusieurs disciplines. Ceux‐ci relèvent en partie de la science politique, qui revendiquera éventuellement le gros du travail, mais d'autres peuvent se réclamer de l'anthropologie, de l'économie, de l'aménagement ou de l'urbanisme, de la géographie humaine, de la politique sociale et de la sociologie. L'introduction articule les six parties de cet essai dans lequel les intervenants analysent chacun l'apport de leur discipline respective dans le champ plus général de la ‘politique urbaine’, tout en dégageant plusieurs pistes possibles de recherches.