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199 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. xiii (1938)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0199 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION EVER since the first government was formed, men have sought to guide or to justify their conduct according to higher laws which stated the good in unequivocal and indisputable terms. Often as not, these efforts passed far beyond the realm of practical affairs into the upper reaches of theory, but if there is any level of government where the subject has been held close to the ground, that level is municipal government. The purpose of this volume is to re- examine the problem of valuations in the field of municipal government and to seek to determine what is meant to- day when we say that one city is gov- erned well and another poorly. There are certain limitations which we must acknowledge. In the first place, we cannot here explore the possibilities of the phrase the good city, since this term embraces every aspect of com- munal life. Final judgment on a city may even disregard the government altogether and attach exclusive signifi- cance to other factors. A city, in the words of William B. Munro, is a concentrated body of population pos- sessing some significant social characteris- tics, chartered as a municipal corporation, having its own system of local government, carrying on multifarious economic enter- prises and pursuing an elaborate program of social adjustment and amelioration. An urban agglomeration of people is, therefore, not a city unless it has a gov- ernment. But the two terms are not synonymous, for there are many activi- ties carried on in cities which are pri- vate in inception and control. A city may be bad although its government is good, and vice versa. The criteria 1 W. B. Munro, City, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, III: 479. for cities are more extensive than those for governments. DIFFERING CRITERIA To the same extent that criteria for cities differ from criteria for govern- ments, the latter differ from tests of ad- ministration. Government is the in- clusive term, relating to the formal or- ganization of social control, in its broadest sense, though generally con- sidered to mean the formulation of policy rather than its execution. Cri- teria of government include specific tests of the processes of making and in- terpreting law; whereas administration, defined as the management of men and materials for the accomplishment of the purposes of the state, is customarily viewed as pertinent only to the execu- tion of the laws.2 Experience has in- dicated, however, that the execution of policy inevitably requires acts which are tantamount to policy-formation. To meet this difficulty it has been sug- gested that the term administration be reserved for this semi-legislative function and that the term manage- ment be used to define the control of the process of executing a given policy.I A city is said to have a personality, a character, and a reputation. As con- trasted with rural areas, cities are re- garded as having contributed more to the development of human mentality, initiative, and achievement, by stimu- lating the differentiation of functions and by providing greater possibilities for wealth, leisure, education, social welfare, and intellectual and cultural advance. 2 See Leonard D. White, Introduction to the Study of Public Administration (New York, 1926), p. 3. 8 See Oliver Sheldon, Management, En- cyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 10: 77ff. xiii

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