¹ One possible exception might be an article that dealt with the independent voter in a Massachusetts city. The reported research was not, however, upon the politics of that city per se: the city was merely a convenient focus for the study of a problem in national politics.

During the past decade, the review has carried seven other articles dealing with city government and politics. One of these clarified a legal term (the village in New Hampshire); a second set down the reminiscences of a candidate for town council. Two articles examined parties in New York City with special emphasis on PR. A fifth article was concerned with the impact of the urban electorate upon the allocation of votes in the Electoral College; another article had as its focus the voting behavior of nationality groups in four cities. The seventh article was concerned with gross changes in the voting behavior of a small town, from 1924 to 1948, as revealed by ballots cast in two elections.

² See Richards, Allen, “Local Government Research: A Partial Evaluation,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 14, pp. 271–277 (Autumn, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ A note on method: The concern of this essay is with the “modal characteristics” of a body of literature; not with its specific contributors. Consequently, none of the generalizations affirmed here applies with equal force to any specific text; moreover, the multiplicity of texts within this field should make it apparent that texts vary in the degree to which they are vulnerable to the criticisms here advanced. Thus, a book such as Adrian, Charles R., Governing Urban America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar is highly conscious of the problems raised here and meets many of them with marked success. Again, a book such as Zink, Harold, Government of Cities in the United States (New York, 1948)Google Scholar especially in its treatment of politics makes a significant departure from the general mode. In similar fashion, other books differ in one or more respects, both in the treatment given specific problems, and in the level of sophistication that attends this treatment. In general, however, the similarities of the texts are great enough to warrant a summary presentation that seeks (only) for central characteristics.

Given the concern of this essay for a body of literature, no attempt will be made to deal with the problem of “mean deviation,” that is, the degree to which any single text approaches, or diverges from, the characterization made here. And, because this essay seeks only for modal characteristics, it is unnecessary to inject an ad hominem element into the discussion by identifying the sources of specific textbook quotations: Such quotations are offered only to illustrate; certainly not to indict.

⁴ Goodnow, Frank J., Municipal Government (New York, 1909)Google Scholar; Maxey, Chester C., An Outline of Municipal Government (New York, 1924)Google Scholar.

⁵ Wallas, Graham, Human Nature in Politics (London, 1908)Google Scholar; Steffens, Lincoln, The Shame of the Cities (New York, 1904)Google Scholar; Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth (London, 1888)Google Scholar. Bryce's view that American cities were the “one conspicuous failure of the United States” seems to have had a chromosomatic impact upon subsequent texts in city government. Cf. Lubell, Samuel, The Future of American Politics (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, 1950)Google Scholar; Hunter, Floyd, Community Power Structure (Chapel Hill, 1953)Google Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, 2d ed. (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; and American State Politics (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Truman, David, The Governmental Process (New York, 1951)Google Scholar.

This second grouping is given merely to suggest the rich lode of constructs and conceptual schemes that more recent writings have opened up for the student of urban government: Lubell, the journalist, concerned with attitudinal sets carried through time; Riesman, the mass-observer, concerned with the socio-psyohological matrix of urban life; Hunter, the sociologist, attempting to apply the inferences of sociometrics to urban power structures and elites; V. O. Key, Jr., the political scientist, concerned with the anatomy of power and the use of statistical inferences; and Truman, also a political scientist, concerned with the group basis of politics.

⁶ All who refer to the development of administrative theory must acknowledge their debt to Dwight Waldo, especially to his Administrative State (New York, 1948)Google Scholar. See also his “Development of the Theory of Democratic Administration,” this Review, Vol. 46, pp. 81–103 (March, 1952)Google Scholar.

⁷ Goodnow, Frank J., Polities and Administration (New York, 1900)Google Scholar. See also the comments of Key, V. O. Jr., “Politics and Administration,” The Future of Government in the United States, ed. White, Leonard (Chicago, 1942), pp. 145–163Google Scholar.

⁸ Dahl, Robert A., “The Science of Administration: Three Problems,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 7, pp. 1–11 (Winter, 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ One of the high-water marks in the development of this body of administrative principles was the publication of Gulick, Luther and Urwick, L., eds., Papers on the Science of Administration (New York, 1937)Google Scholar. In an essay titled “Organization as a Technical Problem,” Urwick wrote (p. 49): “… there are principles … which should govern arrangements for human association of any kind. These principles can be studied … irrespective of the purpose of the enterprise … or any constitutional, political, or social theory underlying its creation.” As an example of these principles, Urwick then went on to say (p. 52): “Students of administration have long recognized that, in practice, no human brain should attempt to supervise directly more than … six other individuals whose work is interrelated.”

¹⁰ The most trenchant demand for evidence of results from reforms built upon these administrative principles came from Hyneman, Charles S., “Administrative Reorganization: An Adventure into Science and Theology,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 1, pp. 62–75 (Feb. 1939)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other demands came from Jacobson, J. Mark, “Evaluating State Administrative Structure,” this Review, Vol. 22, pp. 928–935 (Nov. 1928)Google Scholar; and Edwards, William H., “Has State Reorganization Succeeded,” State Government, Vol. 11, pp. 183–184 (Oct. 1938)Google Scholar.

Among those who turned away from the idea of a value-free efficiency were several soholars who did so only after first attempting to search out this efficiency-in-itself. For a careful analysis of this concept and a defense of its utility for certain instrumental purposes, see Ridley, Clarence E. and Simon, Herbert, Measuring Municipal Activities (Chicago, 1938)Google Scholar, and Simon, Herbert, Administrative Behavior (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

On the relationship between the factual and valuational elements in the administrative act, see ibid., ch. 3.

¹¹ Representative of those who see the city in its many roles is Lewis Mumford. See his Culture of Cities (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; City Development (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; From the Ground Up (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

More significant, however, for systematic research are the writings of the urban sociologists, especially those of the “Chicago school.” See for example the prospectus drawn up in 1925 by Park, Robert E., “Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,” reprinted in Hatt, Paul and Reiss, Albert, Reader in Urban Sociology (Glencoe, 1951), pp. 2–32Google Scholar.

¹² See note 3, above.

¹³ Separation of powers by means of an independently elected executive, however, is eschewed by the text in an effort to overturn ideological obstacles to the coming of the city manager.

¹⁴ As will be discussed in the following section, the empirical evidence for these generalizations is nowhere laid out for inspection.

¹⁵ On the relationship between budget-making and policy, see Herbert Simon, cited in note 10 above, ch. 9; Key, V. O. Jr., “The Lack of Budgetary Theory,” this Review, Vol. 34, pp. 1137–1144 (Dec. 1940)Google Scholar; Mansfield, Harvey C., “Fiscal Accountability,” in Marx, Fritz Morstein, ed., Elements of Public Administration (New York, 1946)Google Scholar, ch. 25.

On the problem of the merit system and democratic responsibility, see Hyneman, Charles S., Bureaucracy in a Democracy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, especially, ch. 15; The American Assembly, The Federal Government Service (New York, 1954)Google Scholar, especially the essays by Herbert Kaufman, Herman M. Somers, and Harvey C. Mansfield.

¹⁶ To state the textbooks' position within the context of this essay, they are still carrying forward the dictum of Frank Goodnow who wrote that the direct primary will deliver over to the people the “same control over nominations that they now have over elections.” Goodnow, cited note 7 above, p. 248.

For some second thoughts on the primary, see V. O. Key, Jr., American State Politics, cited note 5 above, chs. 4, 5, 6; and Ranney, Austin and Kendall, Willmoore, Democracy and the American Party System (New York, 1956), pp. 281–286Google Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., “The Direct Primary and Party Structure: A Study of State Legislative Nominations,” this review, Vol. 48, pp. 1–26 (March, 1954)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ On the relationship between presidential and urban politics, see Key, American State Politics, cited above, ch. 2; Eldersveld, Samuel J., “The Influence of Metropolitan Pluralities in Presidential Elections Since 1920,” this review, Vol. 43, pp. 1189–1206 (Dec. 1949)Google Scholar; Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, cited note 5 above, chs. 3, 4, 5.

¹⁸ The literature treating judicial activism is extensive. Two exceedingly useful items are Cahill, Fred V., Judicial Legislation (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, and Peltason, Jack W., Federal Courts in the Political Process (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ It is somewhat presumptuous to offer bibliographic references for what is axiomatic to scientific investigation. The following, however, examine in detail the propositions that are merely encapsulated here. Reichenbach, Hans, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Berkeley, 1951)Google Scholar; Greenwood, Ernest, Experimental Sociology (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; Cohen, Morris and Nagel, Ernest, Logic and the Scientific Method (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, chs. 6–16; Goode, William and Hatt, Paul, Methods in Social Research (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Stone, Harold, Price, Don K. and Stone, Kathryn, City Manager Government in the U.S. (Chicago, 1940)Google Scholar.

²¹ See Bromage, Arthur, Manager Plan Abandonments (New York, 1940)Google Scholar, revised, 1949.

²² Op. cit., pp. vi–viii. For a prospectus for an empirical examination of city manager government, see Social Science Research Council, Inter-University Seminar, “Research in Political Behavior,” this review Vol. 46, pp. 1003–1045 (Dec. 1952)Google Scholar.

²³ The textbooks offer little evidence that they have thought through the problem of the expert and his proper role in democratic government. Moreover, they appear to be unaffected by the attempts that others have made to deal with this problem. See, for example, Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems (New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., Congress and Foreign Policy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar. See also the spate of administrative writings that treat this problem asymptotically in an attempt to clarify the problem of political controls over bureaucratic structures: Hyneman, Charles S., Bureaucracy in a Democracy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, especially chs. 2–4; Friedrich, Carl J., Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston, 1946)Google Scholar, ch. 19, and “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility,” Public Policy, 1940, ed. Friedrich, Carl J. and Mason, E. S. (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 3–24Google Scholar; Finer, Herman, “Administrative Responsibility in Democratic Government,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 1 (Summer, 1941), pp. 335–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Norton Long, “Power and Administration,” ibid., Vol. 9 (Autumn, 1949), pp. 257–264; Appleby, Paul, Morality and Administration (Baton Rouge, 1949)Google Scholar.

²⁴ See the discussion of marginal maximization and social reform in Dahl, Robert A. and Lindblom, Charles E., Politics, Economics and Social Welfare (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, ch. 3. See also the use of this principle of marginal maximization in the analyses of the Chicago Home Rule Commission as it dealt with questions of the size and method of election for the Chicago city council. Chicago Home Rule Commission, Modernising a City Government (Chicago, 1954), pp. 31–75Google Scholar.

²⁵ For a statement of the concerns of comparative government, see Macridis, Roy C., The Study of Comparative Government (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Social Science Research Council, Inter-University Research Seminar, “Research in Comparative Politics,” this review, Vol. 47, pp. 641–675 (Sept. 1953)Google Scholar.

To suggest a comparative method for the study of city government is not to minimize the difficulties that abound in the use of this method. As V. O. Key notes, in speaking of the use of this method for the study of American states: “Even in the comparative analysis of American states, which should hold constant a great many factors that would complicate comparisons among nations, it is extraordinarily difficult to know when significant variables have been identified.” “The Direct Primary and Party Structure,” cited in note 16 above, pp. 21–22, footnote 21.

²⁶ To take an example within the example, Stephen Bailey's studies of Congressional lawmaking seem rich in inference for the city council. See his Congress Makes a Law (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, and Bailey, Stephen and Samuel, Howard, Congress at Work (New York, 1952)Google Scholar. See also the role-perception framework as used by Huitt, Ralph K., “The Congressional Committee: A Case Study,” this review, Vol. 48, pp. 340–365 (June, 1954)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Forthal, Sonya, Cogwheels of Democracy (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, reissue. Other studies dealing with the precinct captain are: Gosnell, Harold F., Machine Politics: Chicago Model (Chicago, 1937)Google Scholar, ch. 3; Kurtzman, David, Methods of Controlling Votes in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1935)Google Scholar; Mosher, William, “Party Government Control at the Grass Roots,” National Municipal Review, Vol. 24, pp. 15–18 (Jan. 1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Some items representative of this literature are: Fromm, Erich, Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; and The Sane Society (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; De Grazia, Sebastian, The Political Community: A Study in Anomie (Chicago, 1948)Google Scholar; Angell, Robert C., The Moral Integration of American Cities (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar; Whyte, William F., Street Corner Society (Chicago, 1943)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd and Lunt, Paul S., The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven, 1941)Google Scholar; Meyer, Julie, “The Stranger and the City,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 56, pp. 476–483 (March, 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillip Selznick, “Institutional Vulnerability in Mass Society,” ibid., Vol. 56. pp. 320–331 (Jan. 1951); Axelrod, Morris, “Urban Structure and Social Participation,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 21, pp. 13–18 (Feb., 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott Greer, “Urbanism Reconsidered,” ibid., pp. 19–25; and Paul Hatt and Albert Reiss, Reader in Urban Sociology, cited in note 11, above.