American City Politics

Peter Madgwick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135674434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book begins with an introductory outline of the structure of the city politics of the United States. There is a study of the city in the federal system, including the politics of feudal aid. This is followed by four case studies: the political roles of mayor, manager, boss and adminstrator-entrepreneur in the city.

Madgwick concludes with some comparative reflections indicating the significance of this study for British local government.

This book was first published in 1970.

1

The city in the USA

The study of American city politics

The attraction of American local politics for the political scientist is that there is so much of it. For the local government of 200 million people spread over half a continent in 90,000 legally separate units produces a fascinating variety of types of governmental structure and political processes. The difficulties of making general statements of any validity and significance about such a multiplicity of activity are formidable. To forsake the analysis of a single tree for the description of the wood is hazardous indeed, not least because it assumes that the trees make up a wood. Conceivably the totality of activity is as diverse as say, an amalgamation of a cricket match, a baseball game, an investiture and a space-shot. It is true that no city or group of cities may stand alone as a representative example of American city government. ‘No one can ever judge the quality of local government in the United States by his experience with one or two units’ (Dahl, 1967, 180). However the limits to the scope of generalization are not entirely disabling.

Fortunately, the literature, though biased towards the North Eastern United States, is wide ranging; and a judgement of quality (as distinct from an understanding of structure and process) is not a dominant purpose in this study. Nor is the national reference of prime importance. The object is not so much to encapsulate American local government, as to illumine kinds of local political activity in America. The concern is as much with parts of the wood, and sometimes with individual trees, as with the whole amorphous and cacophonous wood. Hence, the use of ‘some’, ‘most’, ‘sometimes’, ‘usually’ and similar approximations may perhaps be justified where approximation is illuminating, exactness impossible and silence pedagogic-ally useless (or frustrating anyway).

The term ‘city’ itself is the first approximation. In the USA it has precise meaning only in constitutional law, indicating a particular division of local government. Here it is used in the imprecise but generally accepted sense of an urban as distinct from a rural area, characterized by large numbers of people, living in proximity, mainly engaged in industrial and commercial activity and interacting socially in some ways so as to form a large, if rather tenuous and shadowy, community. (But that word is an approximation, too.) Most such areas are legally cities, but stray into the surrounding area, like British cities. When this results in a cluster of population around, and related to, a city of at least £0,000 inhabitants, the area is officially described as a standard metropolitan statistical area, or a metropolis, or in planners’ polemical, the Spread City. In i960 there were 212 SMSA's containing 63% of the population of the USA. The smallest city mentioned in the text is Oberlin (Ohio) with 8,000 people; the largest is New York City (with 8,000,000). Most of the cities considered here are larger than 50,000, and there are many references to the very largest cities of over half a million inhabitants. This is not a disproportionate emphasis in relation to the number of people living in these cities; but it is necessary to bear in mind the large number of smaller cities, and the high standing of small cities in the American ethos.

Cities have always had an important place in American social thought (see Glaab and Brown, 1967). In the nineteenth century, when New Paris, Rome City and the like were being deliberately constructed in the wilderness, cities were the object of both sonorous vilification and extravagant ‘boosting’. The city is now, as much as in the last century, in the forefront of much social thought. The city/proclaimed Max Lerner, ‘is the battleground of the values of the culture’ (Lerner, 1958, 168). It is the theatre of the contemporary ‘urban crisis’. There is indeed a new academic ‘booster’ movement promoting the city. It is conceivable that urban perspectives may be exploited as a facile Explanation or Key to History and Politics, as in their day were class conflict and the frontier. The study of urban politics is at best a partial view of politics of the American people.

The nature of the urban community

The pace of urbanization in the USA was dramatically fast, even by the standards of the British industrial revolution. In 1820 there were only twelve cities with populations larger than 10,000; by i860 the figure was 101. Of these, eight had more than 100,000 inhabitants; New York with Brooklyn contained over a million people and was then the third city in the world. Between 19 is and 1920 the number of people living in ‘towns’ of more than 2,500 first exceeded 50% of the population and it is now above 70%. Urbanization at this pace, coupled with massive immigration, expansion westward to the Pacific, and rapid industrialization, represented a profound historical experience which has left its mark on American society and the American people.

For a historically conscious nation the legacy of urbanization has been rich but perplexing. It was a visible triumph of enterprise and technical inventiveness, appearing to vindicate the ‘booster∗ spirit of the pioneers. But it was also restless and unplanned; cities still show the rawness of their making, both in their town landscapes and buildings, and in their politics. Second, the idea of the city never made a complete conquest of the American ethos. Cities offered opportunity, comfort, glamour (Lerner) but corruption too. Rural myths and values had a strong counter-attraction. The American people are incompletely and unwillingly an urban nation. Reluctant to fight on Lerner's cultural battleground, they flee in large numbers to the suburbs (outer suburbs in English terms) and voting with their wheels, promote the spread or scattered city. This, to some visionaries of the city, is an anti-city.

More than half the population lives in or around the larger cities (50,000 population and more). Size would seem to have some significance for the nature of society and of politics since it affects the economic and financial structure, the level and kind of needs and demands, and the potential response of the municipality. There is evidence that large cities have a more vital and diverse group life; and both organized and informal political activity is related to size (Lee, i960, 148-51). Larger cities tend to be more developed i.e. committed to economic development and the provision of amenities. However, the relationship between size and political characteristics is complicated by other partially independent factors–rate of growth, existence of immigrant and middle-class elements in the population, tradition and ethos, the orientation of policy makers (see Eyestone and Eulau, 1968, 56-64, also Kessel, 1962. 615-20).

Moreover, it is not at all clear whether there is any significant character pertaining to a particular range of size. Obviously there is a low point of population at which social relationships change from face-to-face to indirect, and cease to extend predominantly to the whole community. The American statistical custom of counting urban places of more than 2,500 people as cities is valid here. At some higher point the needs and responses of the urban place are transformed by size, and the city becomes a collection of communities (e.g. city centre, and suburb, but also commuters, golfers, teachers). Williams and Adrian propose an intermediate category for cities of 25,000 to 250,000 persons, which they say, lose the face-to-face style of small-town politics, but still have ‘a central system of communication in political and social affairs that is often lacking in the very large population centres’ (Williams and Adrian, 1963, 14).

The connection between location and politics is more obscure. Wolfinger and Field claimed to demonstrate that region was a more important predictor of governmental forms and output than ethos, ethnicity or socio-economic character (Wolfinger and Field, 1966). Their conclusions run counter to much recent work which has stressed the significance of the reform ethos (see Lineberry and Fowler, 1967). Research is as yet too much concentrated in the North-East for development of regional explanations of urban politics. But so far it has not been conclusively shown that such a distinctive region as the South has a distinctive form of local politics. It seems likely in any case that regional differences are declining.

Ethnicity is of major significance in urban politics. It is associated with socio-economic character, status, and success drives, and is therefore difficult to isolate analytically. Dahl has shown (1961, 60) how ethnicity modified socioeconomic factors in determining support of the Democratic Party in New Haven. In New York ‘class consciousness never appears so strongly as ethnic awareness’ (Lowi, 1964,34)

Ethnic awareness is intensified by colour, and coloured minorities are now a characteristic feature of Northern cities. ‘Central cities are becoming more heavily Negro while the urban fringes around them remain almost entirely white. The proportion of Negroes in all central cities rose steadily from 12% in 1950, to 17% in i960, to 20% in 1966’ (Kerner Report, 1968, 243). Washington DC is now two thirds Negro and in the next 20-25 years at least ten of the fourteen largest cities will have Negro populations of 25-50%. Every aspect of government in these cities is now conditioned by the existence of the coloured minorities.

Comparatively, the foreign-born whites constitute a major but declining influence as such, and do not threaten stability. In i960, 19% of the population of US were foreign-born. Some of these were Puerto Ricans or Mexicans. The classic European immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ended by the i92o's. But the social and political significance of an immigrant descent continues. The political history of cities like Boston and New York is a saga of domestic nationalism, Italians struggling with the Irish and both with Jews. De Sapio's victory in New York, 1949, and Impelliteri's election as Mayor in 1951, marked the advance of the Italians. In some areas, small but cohesive ethnic groups promote a politics of neighbourhood and status. This was true of Poles and Dutch in two of the four cities studied by Williams and Adrian (1963). In 1969 Italians won both Republican and Democratic primaries in New York City against Mayor Lindsay, preeminently a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). If ethnic political drives have diminished, they still have considerable force and are served with respect by politicians whose own ethnic drives may not be strong. Religion reinforces ethnic differences. Nominations for elective office and appointments are still balanced, or at least made with some consideration of race and religion. Thus the political processes, contrary to the theory of the melting pot, help to maintain an awareness of differences.

Population movement within metropolitan areas has expressed and emphasized the conflicts of classes, race and colour. The suburbs are growing rapidly. Over ‘three quarters of the white population increase, 1950-66, of 36 million occurred in the suburbs. These were 95% white and became 96% white by 1966. In the same years, 195066, 86% of the increase in Negro population took place within the central cities’ (Kerner Report, 1968, 243).

Suburban America was mainly middle-class America– zoning and building regulations, and pressures on and from builders and bankers, have preserved suburbs as havens for the prosperous white. The commuting businessman kept a tenuous link with the City centre, but increasingly he has found his social and political life, and eventually, his business, in the suburb.

The political culture of the city

Most Americans believe that local government has at least some effect on their day-to-day lives–88% of respondents compared with 74% in Britain and West Germany (Almond and Verba, 1963, 81). A high proportion again believed they could do something about an unjust local regulation–77% in USA, 78% in Britain, 62% in Germany (p. 185). A comparatively high proportion favour community activity– 51% in USA to 39% in Britain, and a mere 22% in Germany (p. 169). Not unexpectedly, more people claim to understand local issues moderately well or very well, than national or international issues (Almond and Verba, survey quoted in Dahl, 1967, 201). In local as in national government there appears to be a prevailing sense of competence.

However, the sense of competence is not related to high levels of direct political participation, as indicated by voting turnout. This is on average about 40% in local elections, between 10% and 30% less in particular cities than the turnout for Presidential elections (Banfield and Wilson, 1963, 225). Indeed, the general sense of competence and favourable attitudes to participation hide pockets of cynicism and alienation. Nor are they incompatible with quite widespread negative attitudes to the scope and activity of local government. The competent citizen, acting from a sense of satisfaction or of hostility, may choose to participate only in order to reduce the municipality to a conservative, caretaker role. In general this attitude is found among lower income groups, who are comparatively unaware of social needs and of the capacity of urban governments to fulfill them. The better-off groups are more ready to promote civic amenities and prosperity (Williams and Adrian, 1963). Thus, in sum, the sense of competence in local government is associated with a marked lack of enthusiasm for the actual operations of local government.

There have been two major traditions in urban politics, the ‘machine’ and ‘reform’. Machine rule had its classic period from the 1860’s to about the 1940’s. It is now much diminished, though not extinct and at least one machine of classic style survives–Mayor Daley's in Chicago.

A machine is a party organization, but one based on small electoral divisions (wards and precincts) and the trading of services (jobs, welfare, protection, bribery, contact and communication) in return for votes. It was based historically on an immigrant population and corruption. The immigrants needed services and security not political participation. Their needs were met in return for handing over politics to professionals who were interested in power and wealth. The machine was a closed political system, not concerned with issues, debate and agitation or the public interest. But it may well have provided the urban working classes with an efficient system of social welfare and political communication.

The reform tradition arose in part as a reaction to the corruption and inefficiency of the late nineteenth-century machine, but is linked historically with Progressivism and its raw country cousin, Populism. Machine politics developed naturally in the fast growing and teeming cities of the US; its philosophy was invented later. The reform tradition had from its beginnings a philosophy– or several–and publicists to promote it. ‘Reform is what America has instead of ideology/Reformers campaigned for good government recoiling from government by ‘a crowd of illiterate peasants, freshly raked in from Irish bogs, or Bohemian mines or Italian Robber nests’ (Andrew White in the Forum, Dec, 1890, quoted in Banfield Reader, 1961, 213). By good government they meant a reformed political structure–non-partisan and at-large elections, city managers, secret ballot, merit appointments; and progressive aims–the elimination of corruption, efficient administration, welfare policies, civic pride. The public interest was set against the selfish pursuit of private gain. The movement had some affinity with the contemporaneous British gas-and-water socialism (by any other name, of course), the same affection for both welfare and civic pomp (parks with statues, libraries with bell-towers, gothic town halls).

The Reform tradition had its weaknesses; a facile idealism, seeing easy solutions by getting rid of bad men and setting up good machinery; and on the welfare side, a certain chilly Benthamism, again with comparable British examples. Politically, it has lacked the staying power of the machine, but then, unlike the machine, it had objectives beyond mere staying power.

But in the long run of American local government reformism as an ethos rather than a specific programme cannot be discounted. Recent studies have shown the significance of political ethos in determining the performance of urban political systems, particularly in comparison with socio-economic factors. The difficulty here is to isolate ‘ethos’ from the institutions which it promoted and sustains. But it seems safe to conclude that the two together, reform ethos and reformed institutions, are of potentially high significance.

City government is necessarily a part of the federal system, ultimately subordinate to the State constitutionally, and increasingly dependent on, or at least enjoying, federal financial aid. The autonomy of city politics is further diminished by the incursions of national politics and politicians. America's most successful Reform Mayor, La Guardia, came to power on a wave of New Deal enthusiasm, and was grateful for F. D. Roosevelt's political favour as well as for a generous allocation of federal funds. Federal patronage has been used quite ruthlessly, for example by John F. Kennedy, to influence local parties. Stevenson, a State Governor and Democratic candidate for President in 1952 and 1956, inspired an urban reform wave: a national sentiment gave rise to local action. But national voting sentiment is not transferred consistently to local politics; in particular regular Democrats tend to vote independently for the chief local offices. The reverse impact–of city politics on national politics–has been in the past less dramatic. Mayors have reached the US Senate and one former Mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey (a reform Mayor) became Vice-President. Mayor Lindsay of New York is a leading figure in the Republican party but is unlikely to defeat the sitting President for the Presidential nomination in 1972.

There are no academic tests of abrasiveness or demureness. But American city politics–especially big city politics–strikes an English observer as notably less demure than British local government. The stakes are higher for the American politician and citizen: there are greater power and more rewards available. The tensions of low-income whites and Negroes are most severe; and mainly for this reason local politics are often stormier than national politics.

2

The structure of city politics

Areas and administrative units

In a system governed by both the precepts and the aura of the Constitution, the city has no constitutional standing. It is the creature of the states, whose power in domestic matters is still superior to that of the national government. The position is laboriously affirmed in many state constitutions. For example, an article of the New York State Constitution lays on the legislature the duty of restricting the taxing, assessing and borrowing powers of the cities, and adds for good measure, ‘Nothing in this article shall be construed to prevent the Legislature from further restrict-ting the power herein specified …’

Judicial interpretation has generally favoured...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• A note on terms
• 1 The city in the USA
• 2 The structure of city politics
• 3 The city in the federal system
• 4 Four political roles
• 5 Conclusion
• Suggestions for further reading
• Select bibliography