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353 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. viii (1964)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0353 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD

There was a period in municipal history when the boss was dramatized
as the major element in municipal and state politics. Now, it is widely
assumed, and often shown, that the boss has disappeared. The circum-
stances which gave rise to his power-the influx of immigrants unfamiliar
with American ways, a set of democratic electoral devices ready for manip-
ulation, unrestrained economic individualism, and a dearth of social services
-have altered. The flow of immigrants has been cut to a trickle-if we
except the modern counterpart, the Negro and Puerto Rican moving north,
as our authors note; Franklin Roosevelt and his reforms ruined the boss as
a purveyor of social benefits; the country grew, partly at least, out of its
jungle-like economic warfare. Consequently, it is not so easy now to
locate the municipal boss.
The search for the nature of municipal political leadership continues.
Urban leadership now functions under nonpartisanship in some cities and
in others under reform movements inside the Democratic party. Belief in
the existence of political elites dies hard; the cases examined in these
essays, however, indicate that many different varieties of political patterns
exist in the United States, in situations which are often highly fluid, with
political power widely shared.
The business group, often credited in the popular mind with secretly held
power, seems limited, as in Los Angeles. Labor, although politically
ambitious, has not achieved great and certain power, even in cities which
may seem labor strongholds. Party lines at the municipal level are weak;
candidates do not hesitate to desert party colleagues. Municipal political
life is often characterized by shifting factions, highly personalized and not
always clearly visible.
The city-manager form, often thought-erroneously, I believe-to be
designed with the idea that politics could be banished from administration,
has flourished in some cases under certain types of machine rule. Thus, in
Kansas City, the machine survived the introduction of the manager plan,
which it absorbed. Eventually, the machine was overthrown and the
manager plan continued. It has survived recent political squabbles. In
Florida manager cities, variety characterizes political life, with managers
overshadowed by more powerful figures, except in cases where the manager
builds his own machine.
The city boss has generally been required to take account of the state, if
for no other reason than the legal structure which put the city at the
state's mercy. But bosses could not always control the state; political styles
of state and city were often at variance. Such appears to be the case in
Louisiana, where the major city follows a style still differentiated from that
of the state. Success in New Orleans is still no guarantee of success in
the state.
viii

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