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Author(s): L. J. Sharpe
Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 1-28
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/193591
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B.J.Pol.S. 3, I-28
Printedin GreatBritain
We allude particularly to the municipal institutions; which ... as might have been
expected,arethe veryfountain-headof Americandemocracy,and the principalcauseof
all that is valuablein its influences:but, of which Englishtravellers,a race who have
eyes and see not, ears and hear not, have not so much as perceivedthe existence.
J. S. Mill
In his celebrated study of American democracy written in 1888, Lord Bryce
reserved his most condemnatory reflections for city government and in a much-
quoted passage asserted: 'There is no denying that the government of cities is the
one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National
government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the
State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption
and mismanagementwhich mark the administration of most of the great cities'.1
This paper does not attempt the daunting task of bringing Bryce up to date;
rather, it has the more limited objectives of examining some of the main charac-
teristics of the American system of urban government today and the concepts of
democracy that inform it, and of posing the question 'Is it democratic?' rather
than 'Is it bad ?' in the Brycean sense.
The paper will focus on American city government, but because in the United
States 'the connection between local and national politics is peculiarly close' and
the study of city politics 'affords exceptional opportunities to generalize about
American political culture, American democracy and democracy in general'2it
may be assumed that much of what is said will apply to American government
generally. Moreover, the discussion will in any case inevitably embrace some of
the relevant literature on national government and democratic theory generally.
Since all accounts that are of any value of the political system of another country
* NuffieldCollege,Oxford.This articleis the productof a congenialsabbatical
year spent at
Queen'sUniversityin Canadaand is based on a papergiven at the CanadianPolitical Science
AssociationConferenceheld at St John's,Newfoundlandin I97I. Many people have read and
commentedon it; too manyto mentionall of themindividually.But I wouldlike to mentionthe
following whose help went well beyond the normal line of duty: Brian Barry, Lewis Gunn,
Steven Kotler, Hans Lovink, W. J. M. Mackenzie,John Meisel and Frank Smallwood.Part I
of the articleappearsin this numberof the Journal;PartII and the Conclusionswill appearin
the next number.
1 J. Bryce, TheAmericanCommonwealth (New York: Macmillan,I899), Vol. II, p. 281.
2 Both quotations are taken from E. Banfield and J.
Wilson, City Politics (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 2.
1
2 SHARPE
are essentially comparative exercises with the observer's home country as the
(usually unconscious) measuring rod, it may be just as well to make this explicit.
So the first part of this paper - Part I - will assess the democratic character of
American city government by comparing it directly with that of my home
country, Britain.
Democracy is, of course, a notoriously difficult form of government to define,
and no claim is made that the characteristicsto be compared in Part I cover all
aspects of democratic government; nor is any rank order of relative importance
attempted; rather, discussion will be confined to those aspects that are generally
regarded as being the hallmarks of American local democracy in the literature,
especially the literature that compares the American and British systems. It is
hoped that a sufficiently convincing primafacie case is made out in Part I to at
least justify the question 'Is American city government democratic?' being raised.
Part II of the paper will drop explicit comparisons with Britain and concentrate
on those broader attributes of government that, it will be argued, all democratic
systems should possess as prerequisites.Again there is no attempt to be compre-
hensive; the concepts discussed are those that seem to be missing, or only weakly
perceived, in the United States. This is the aim; the problem mentioned above of
the inevitability of the home country's remaining the unconscious measuring rod
of course remains. It may be said in mitigation, however, that in lacking these
basic attributes the American system appears to be less like those of other com-
parable advanced industrial democracies than is the British.
This may seem at first glance a presumptuous and formidable task, particularly
for an outsider and an Englishman. Whatever else the American system may
be, it is usually conceded by most political scientists, American or otherwise, that
it is democratic and usually that it is more democratic than the system in Britain.
As the virtualinventors of modern representativedemocracy,it is hardlysurprising
that Americans have an intense pride in their democratic traditions. As Dahl has
put it, in the United States 'the common view seems to be that our system is not
only democratic but is perhaps the most perfect expression of democracy that
exists anywhere'.3 It seems likely that this peculiarly strong association in the
United States between democracy and American society has meant that its
political practices, whatever these may be, must of necessity be thought to be
democratic and thereforejustified.4 The conditions of American society became
the conditions of democracy: the one has become inextricablybound up with the
other to an extent that would be unusual in other democracies. In this instance,
then, it may be that the task is not so presumptuous as it appears and that the
outside observer may be better equipped to sit in judgement than the home
observer.
That this paper will concentrate on urban government and not all local govern-
ment needs special emphasis. What remains of genuinely rural local government
3 R.
Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, I96I), p. 316.
4 'To reject the democratic creed is in effect to refuse to be an American', Dahl, Who Governs ?
p. 317.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 3
I. Experimental/Conservative
Contemplating the vast array of electoral arrangements, representative systems
and decision-making structures of American cities, it would be difficult for one
to deny that American urban politics are more experimental than British."1The
9 Accordingto Eckstein:'WhetherBritainis a
democracyor not, Britishgovernmentis at
least supremelyconstitutionalin character',('The BritishPolitical System',p. Ioi). Almond
andVerba,CivicCulture,take a differentview however,and give Britaina higherratingin terms
of democraticqualitythan the United States.
10E. Banfield,ed., Big CityPolitics(New York: Random House, I965), p. 3.
1' L. Boyle, 'British and American City Government', Local Government Finance, LXXI
(I967). Banfieldstronglyconcurs that Americancity governmentis innovatingand attributes
6 SHARPE
British system has always been reluctant to experiment with its internal decision-
making structure. Its electoral structure is another matter since it tends to be
governed by statute and is therefore beyond the control of individual councils,
although it is doubtful whether variation would ensue if local authorities were
given greater freedom to make their own electoral arrangements.This unadven-
turousness is clearly revealed by the reactions of city councils to the recommen-
dations of the Report of the Maud Committee on Management.12In all but a
minority of councils it seems the response has been fairly tentative.13
Viewed in terms of the services provided by urban government, however, there
may be little difference between the two systems. The willingness of British
boroughs to experiment in the provision of health, welfare and cultural services
seems to stand in contrast to the American experience.14Moreover, viewed as a
whole, British urban government has been rather more experimental than the
American in terms of metropolitan reorganization. The fundamental redesigning
of the local government structure of London, Birmingham and Teesside during
the I96os, and the wholesale reorganization of the system in England and Wales
embodied in the Local Government Act, 1972, stand in sharp contrast to the
much more limited metropolitan umbrella schemes established in Miami, Baton
Rouge and Nashville which have left the existing structures and boundaries
virtually untouched.15
All in all, it would be difficult to say with any finality which is the more experi-
mental system. There is a much narrowerconception of what are the appropriate
limits of government, both national and local, in the United States - of which
more later - and this affectsthe extent of serviceexperimentationacutely. Equally,
the belief that, once created, a municipality takes on a life of its own and can only
be abolished or amalgamated provided a majority of its citizens agree makes
fundamental change on the scale of the British examples cited extremely difficult,
whatever the role or inclinations of senior government.16 But the absence of
entrenched professional officer groups, the much stronger adherence to the
this to the fact that power is highly diffused: 'a selection process (or political system) which allows
of the exercise of power rather than that of persuasion by affected interests produces a wider
canvass of policy alternatives than does a process which allows the affected interests only the
opportunity to persuade', E. Banfield, Political Influence, paperback edition (New York: Free
Press, I965), pp. 334-5.
12 Report of the Committee on Management in Local Government (Maud), Vol. I. (London:
HMSO, 1967).
13 See R. Greenwood, A. Smith and J. Stewart, New Patterns ofLocal GovernmentOrganization
(Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham, 1971), and J. Elliott, 'The
Harris Experiment in Newcastle upon Tyne', Public Administration, XLIX (1971), I49-62.
14
Banfield, ed., Big City Politics, p. 12.
15 It must be admitted that this grants the British system a more experimental stance than it
may merit since the decisive factor in bringing all reorganization schemes in Britain to the
Statute book is the central government.
16 But not wholly impossible since the new created metropolitan authority - Unigov - covering
the city of Indianopolis and the adjoining Marin county seems to be a fundamental change in
the existing structure. See HUD Challenge (Washington: Department of Housing and Urban
Development, May 1971).
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 7
division of powers doctrine, and the problems created by corruption, have given
the American system far greater scope for experiment in decision-making
procedures.
2. Contentious/Placid
This is a very difficult set of attributes to assess since the very openness of the
American system means that conflict when it does occur is usually in public view,
whereas under the British system it may be there but be hidden from public (and
academic) view. British urban politics are not only usually shrouded from the
public gaze, but social habits frown on the vehement expression of disagreement
in public, and the much more developed and professionalizedpermanentbureauc-
racy in Britain has a very important influence in moderating the tenor of political
conflict. It would be a profound mistake to confuse style with content however.
Debating all issues in ostensibly polite form is one of the more cultivatedtraditions
of British politics but these issues would seem to be every bit as contentious as
those that crop up in American cities. The confusion of style for content certainly
seems to have misled Banfield who explicity equates the two.17 Moreover, all the
major urban authorities in Britain and most of the medium range ones are run,
by American standards, on rigid party lines and this means that the opportunity
to exploit a potentially sensitive issue is seldom squandered by the opposition
party. And many non-sensitive issues, not to say non-issues, are the subject of
party conflict.
There is, as yet, nothing comparable to the racial conflict that seems to impinge
on practically every aspect of urban politics in the United States, particularlyin
the larger northern cities, but it would be wrong to underestimate the extent of
political conflict that occurs in British city councils if only because they have the
main responsibility for housing and schools. These two services, touching as they
do on fundamental aspects of equality, have provided the basis for some of the
sharpest party conflict on the home policy front in Britain since the end of the
Second World War. In some respects the class antagonism that always lies just
below the surface in British society has been more evident in urban local govern-
ment than in national.18Party antagonisms at the city level can be equally bitter
and acrimonious on other issues as well.19
3. Open/Closed
That American urban politics are open and more open than British seems irre-
futable. It seems likely that American city government is one of the most open of
all democratic systems. Shils considers that the openness of American democracy
is one of its main pillars, publicity being seen as a good in itself. 'Repugnance of
government secretiveness was an offspring of the distrust of aristocracy.'20
British urban government, by contrast, is often closed to the point of absurdity
and virtually the whole of the decision-making process is usually fenced off from
the public and the press. The various attempts that have been made to give the
press greateraccess have been circumventedand the generalpublic usually remains
ignorant of the major decisions until they reach the council agenda. Dissatis-
faction was expressed at this state of affairs for a long period, culminating in
specific legislation in I962 designed to give the press greater access; but this has
proved to be largely ineffective.21A similar fate probably awaits another attempt
to give the press access to committees incorporated in the Local Government Act
of I972. An attempt has been made in recent years to open up land use planning
procedures to the public,22 but whether this will be repeated for other services
remains to be seen.
An important element in the openness of American city government seems to
be derivedfrom the status of the local press which by British standardsis accorded
by the elector and the elected a place in the community that makes it almost a
part of the formal processes of government. In some cities it seems to play the
role of the official political opposition to city hall, and in others, particularly
non-partisan cities, it appears to form an essential part of the electoral process as
well.23 In all cities government is required to maintain a continuous flow of
information to its electorate, and the press, radio and television play an essential
part in transmitting and interpreting this information. New York is probably
sui generis among American cities but Sayre and Kaufman's description of the
place of the media in its government may stand as a fair summary for most
American cities:
Like other institutionsof the city, the mass communicationsmedia are profoundly
affectedby governmentalactions and decisions.In this respectthey are classed with
othernon-governmentalgroups.
In otherrespects,however,they are specialand a class apart.In the firstplace, they
arenot merelycontestantsin the greatgameof thecity'spolitics,theyarealso the princi-
pal channelthroughwhichall othercontestantsreachthegeneralpublic,hence,theyhave
a greatimpact- usuallydeliberately,sometimesinadvertently- on some governmental
20 Shils, TheTormentof Secrecy,p. 37. Barryarguesconvincinglythat the greateropennessof
the Americansystem is a direct result of the fragmentedcharacterof the government:'since
influenceis a functionof power-diffusionand informationa functionof influence,may it not be
that althougha politicalsystemwhich fragmentspowerrequiresmore informationon the part
of ordinarycitizensit at the same time providesa strongermotive for acquiringinformation?'
B. Barry,Political Argument (London: Routledge, I965), p. 271.
21 See D. Hill, Participation inLocal Affairs (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), Chap. vi.
22 The proceduresinvolve consultationwith the public before, during andafter the accep-
tance of structureand local plans.They stem fromPeopleandPlanning,the Reportof the Com-
mitteeon PublicParticipationin Planning(Skeffington)(London:HMSO, I969).
23 E. Lee, The Politics of Non-Partisanship (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, I960),
p. I63.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 9
4. Demotic/Deferential
The assumption in the literature25that American city politics are less middle class
and less deferential in characterthan British seems to be much less accurate than
those so far discussed. It therefore warrantsa rather more extended examination.
Adequate information is lacking, especially on the American side, so any con-
clusion must be tentative. There is also the problem that the concept of class is
notoriously difficult to define with any precision and is sometimes used very
loosely in the literature on urban politics.26 An additional hazard arises from
differing conceptions as to who is and who is not middle class in Britain and the
United States. Nevertheless, some of the difficulties of making comparisons
between the two countries can be avoided by taking the unquestionably working-
class category of manual worker. The Maud Committee Report on management
24 W.
Sayre and H. Kaufman, GoverningNew York City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
I960), p. 8I.
25 This is
especially true of Banfield but see also S. Greer, Governing the Metropolis (New
York: John Wiley, I962), p. 45. The tendencyto believethat Americanlocal governmentis, or
ought to be, more demoticis also broughtout tangentiallyin Almondand Verba(CivicCulture,
Table 4, p. I76). Whereas among the unskilledthere is little differencebetween the United
States and Britainin the proportionwho thoughtthat the ordinaryman should be activein his
local community,at the upper end of the social scale almost three quartersof the American
samplewere of this opinion comparedwith 42 per cent of the Britishsample.
26 See for example E. Banfield, The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), especially
Chap.m.
IO SHARPE
There is no comparably comprehensivedata for the United States, but what there
is, as Newton has pointed out, strongly suggests that there are substantially fewer
manual workers on American city councils.28 Newton quotes Miller's, D'An-
tonio's, and Williams and Adrian's findings, derived in Miller's case from a
direct comparison of the social composition of the Bristol (England) council with
the Seattle and Atlanta city councils, and in the other cases on data from a number
of other American cities.29
Rossi, although not covering the comparative aspects, also found that the
middle classes dominate America's local community institutions, and Agger,
Goldrich and Swanson found a similar dominance on the councils of three of the
four towns in their study.30 That manual workers are few and far between in
American local government is also suggested in Lowi's analysis of the social
composition of New York's mayoral cabinet over the period I898 to I967.31
Finally, Prewitt, in what is probably the most thorough and comprehensive
examination of the composition of local councils in the United States, concludes
that for potential councilmen, 'On balance it is advantageous to be white, male,
Protestant, college educated, in a prestige occupation, above average income and
native stock preferablyAnglo-Saxon descent.'32
This is hardly as conclusive as the evidence for Britain. That it is probably on
the whole representative, however, is suggested by two further considerations.
The first, as Newton suggests, is the strong link between working-class member-
ship of city councils and the existence of a socialist party. Epstein's findings drawn
from a number of countries suggest this and it certainly seems to be the case for
27
Report, Vol. 2, Table 1.9.
28 Newton, Community Decision-makers and Community Decision-making, p. 9. D. Berry
viewingpolitics nationallyalso concludesthat in the United States 'politicalactivityis largely
a preserveof the middleclass, and thus Americanpolitics might be regardedas class based in
that both majorpoliticalpartiesare largelymiddleclass parties',TheSociologyof GrassRoots
Politics (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 25.
29 D. Miller,'Industryand CommunityPowerStructure:a ComparativeStudyof an American
and an English City', American Sociological Review, xxII (1958), 9-15; D'Antonio et al., 'Insti-
tutionaland OccupationRepresentationin ElevenCommunitySystems',AmericanSociological
Review,xxvI (1961), 440-6; O. Williamsand C. Adrian,FourCities(Philadelphia:University
of PennsylvaniaPress, I963), p. 78.
30 P. Rossi, 'Theory,Researchand Practicein CommunityOrganization' in C. Adrian,ed.,
Social Science and Community Action (East Lansing: Institute for Community Development,
I960); R. Agger, D. Goldrich and B. Swanson, The Rulers andthe Ruled(New York: John Wiley,
1964),Chap.vn.
31
T. Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor (New York: Free Press, 1964) p. 51.
32 K.
Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders (New York: Prentice Hall, 1970), p. 3.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered II
industrial societies, the poorest section of the American working class gets a
fairly rough deal. Despite the highest per capita income in the world, the United
States has had a consistently high unemployment rate;38 among the eighteen
industrial democracies (or 'western systems') it ranks twelfth in terms of infant
mortality, sixteenth in male life expectancy,39and the percentage of GNP spent
on welfare is half that of Britain and a third that of France.40Another indicator
of working-class welfare that is even more relevant to the present discussion,
since it is largely the responsibility of local government in both countries and can
be measured in fairly unambiguous terms, is public housing. The proportion of
the total housing stock provided by government is 30 per cent in Britain;41the
comparable figure for the United States is I per cent.42
The other claim, that the British electorate is more deferential than the Ameri-
can, has received rather more attention from political scientists. The most often
cited evidence of it nationally is that about a third of working-class voters vote
for the ConservativeParty, that is to say, they defer to an interest other than their
own by voting for a party which is composed of and symbolizes an 'ascriptive'
elite instead of, presumably (this is not always made clear in the literature),
someone in their own social class. The most systematicstudies of this phenomenon,
notably those of Nordlinger, and McKenzie and Silver, both conclude that
working-class loyalty to the Conservatives is in fact derived from deference.43
However, the most comprehensive general study of voting attitudes in Britain,
that by Butler and Stokes, suggeststhat the generationfactor is far more important
in accounting for working-class Conservatism. They argue that many older
working-class voters do not vote Labour because there was no Labour Party
when they formed their political allegiance, and in support of their contention
they show that the difference between the percentage of the working class sup-
porting the Conservatives and the percentage of the middle class supporting
38 The Americanunemploymentrate has never fallen below 3-2 per cent since the Second
WorldWar(Banfield,The UnheavenlyCity,p. 93) and this is ahigherpercentagethantheBritish
unemploymentrate ever reacheduntil 197I. The relation betweenthe unemploymentrate and
the well being of the poorer end of the workingclass is well illustratedby the finding that a
reductionin the US rate from 5-4 per cent to 3-5 per cent would increasefull-timeemployment
for I,042,000 poor and such a reduction would have the net result of bringing 1,8II,000 above
the povertyline, R. G. Hollisterand J. L. Palmer,The Impactof Inflationon thePoor,Institute
of Researchon PovertyDiscussion Paper (Wisconsin,I969), quoted in J. Tobin and K. Ross,
'Living With Inflation', New York Review, 6 May I971.
39 Rose, Governing Without Consensus, Table XV, I.
40 H. Aaron, 'Social Security:InternationalComparisons'in 0. Eckstein,ed., Studiesin the
Economics of Income Maintenance (Washington: Brookings Institution, I967). See G. Myrdal,
Challengeto Affluence(London: Gollancz,I963), Chap. iii, for a discussionof the difference
betweenthe USA and other Westerndemocraciesin the attitudetowardsthe poor.
41 D. V. Donnison, The Government of Housing (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967).
42 A. Downes, 'Housing - Myth and Reality', Minnesota Municipalities, LV(I97O).
43 E. Nordlinger,The Working Class Tories (London:MacGibbon&Kee, 1967); R. McKenzie
and A. Silver,Angelsin Marble(London: Heinemann,1968).This also seems to be the case in
relation to other studies. See for example W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivationand Social
Justice(Harmondsworth:PenguinBooks, 1972),p. 172. SeealsoJessop,'CivilityandTraditional-
ism in EnglishPoliticalCulture'for otherreferences.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 13
Labour drops to 6 for the age cohort that reached voting age in the post-I95I
period.44This comparatively minor difference could easily be accounted for by
religious and regional variations that may have nothing to do with deference.
McKenzie and Silver and Nordlinger support their hypothesis with the results
of attitude surveys.45The most telling of McKenzie and Silver's results is that 48
per cent of the Conservativeworking-classsupportersin their sample, as compared
with 28 per cent of Labour working-class supporters, would prefer a prime
minister to be of high social status. Most of the other attitudes they examine -
towards the monarchy and the House of Lords - are shown to be almost as strongly
held by the Labour-supporting working class as by the working-class Tories.
Although they recognize that deference 'is not the only ideological basis of
contemporaryworking-classConservatism',they say: 'The fact that many working
class Conservatives prefer Prime Ministers to be of elite social origin, take a
benign view of the upper class, favour retaining an unaltered House of Lords and
are relatively content with their social status and prospects, suggests the idea
of "deference" as a basis of working class Conservative voting.'46
But this assertion raises the question of whether the working classes of any
country are 'normally' inclined to hold very strong views about changing the
existing political order and, if they are, whether anything about their tendency to
deference can be inferred. As Parkin has pointed out, given the fact that parties
of the statusquoare more likely to reflectthe dominant ideals of industrial society,
it seems perverse to begin on the assumption that all working-class voters should
be supporters of socialism and then to treat those who are not as deviants.47On
the face of it, it seems doubtful; and it is highly probable that if we substitute
'Republican' (or 'Democrat' in the South) for 'Conservative'; 'WASP' for 'elite
social origin'; and 'Senate' (or 'SupremeCourt') for 'House of Lords', McKenzie
and Silver's conclusion would be equally valid for the United States. It is usually
accepted that Americans, whatever their attitude to government generally, hold
certain of their national political institutions in greater veneration than others
becausethese institutions embody the ideals onwhich the nationitself wasfounded.
The very persistence of these institutions virtually unchanged for almost two
centuries testifies to this. There are also other aspects of American society that
reinforce this innate conservatism. As Lipset has put it: 'A strong societal em-
phasis on achievement and equalitarianism ... combined with strong religious
belief, particularly among the lower strata, should maximise the legitimacy of
44 David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, I969),
p. I07.
45 See McKenzie and Silver, Angels in Marble, Chap. v, and Nordlinger, The Working Class
Tories, Chaps. IIIand Iv.
46 McKenzie and Silver, Angels in Marble, p. I63. Similarly, Nordlinger asserts that because
41 per cent of the Conservative-voting working class prefer to be led by a peer, as compared with
20 per cent of the Labour working class, 'the importance attached to high status in the English
political system is forcefully underscored', p. 66.
47 F. Parkin, 'Working Class Conservatives', British Journal of Sociology, xviii (I967),
278-90.
I4 SHARPE
the existing distribution of privilege, and thus minimize the conditions for
extremist protest. This is, of course, the situation in the United States.'48
If working-class acceptance of upper-classleaders, existing political institutions
and their own lot in the social orderis not much differentbetweenthe two countries,
it may still be pointed out that one third of the working class in Britain do vote for
a party of the status quo. This is, in fact, one of the main props of the deferential
theory. But, if this is a manifestation of deference, then it must be explained how it
is that Britain has one of the largest, one of the oldest and one of the electorally
strongest socialist parties among advanced industrial democracies. If voting for
non-socialist parties by working-class electors is an indication of deference, then
the United States with no socialist party at all must be by definition one of the
most deferential of these countries.
Startling as this proposition seems at first sight, it may not be very far from the
truth. We have already noted that the American local elector tends to favour
middle- or upper-middle-class representatives rather more than his British
counterpart and, if we take Nordlinger's definition of a deferential right wing
voter ('those Conservative voters who manifest a strong preference for men of
high status as their government leaders'), then American politics is indeed highly
deferential.49 Matthews's pioneering study mentioned earlier examined the
religious, racial, ethnic, and occupational character of the Presidency, Cabinet,
Senate and House of Representatives up to 1950, and it strongly suggests this.
Writing about the United States in I954 Matthews concludes, 'It seems under-
standable in a society with an accepted stratification system for the electorate to
choose men with high social status to represent them in the decision-making
process. A man with a fairly high social position has met the society's definition
of success'.50Agger and his colleagues also came suspiciously close to explaining
the American predilection for upper-class representativesin what may be called
deference terms: 'If the top of the political structurenumerically over represents
upper class people... It also may be arguedthat people of upperclass backgrounds
may represent the interests of the relatively under privileged, the "common
man"'.51 The objection to this interpretation of Matthews, and Agger and his
colleagues, is that support for upper-class political leaders and of the existing
political order is not deference because the national ethos of the United States is
anti-aristocratic and non-ascriptive but favours instead individual achievement.
However, since wealth and status may be inherited, this objection seems largely
misguided. A predilection for upper-classrepresentativescan only be interpretedas
recognition of achievementwhere the representativehas achievedhis position with-
in his own life-time but, as we shall see, the United States is exceptional in the
extent to which its upper class retainsits position from one generationto the next.
It would be interesting to know why, despite the evidence, American politics
48 S.
Lipset, 'ValuePatterns,Classandthe DemocraticPolity'in R. BendixandS. Lipset,eds.,
Class, Status and Power, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 171.
49
Nordlinger, The Working Class Tories, p. 64.
50
Matthews, Social Background of Political Decision-Makers, p. 33.
51 Agger et al., The Rulers and The Ruled, p. 268.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 15
5. Participatory/Autonomous
The fifth pair of opposed attributes to be considered concerns the extent of par-
ticipation in the two systems. The British tradition, so the argument runs, grants
greater autonomy to government and therefore has to sacrifice public partici-
pation. At first glance, American urban government is undoubtedly far more
participatory than the British. Here the strongly held American belief that in a
2
I8 SHARPE
democracy all authority should derive from the popular will seems to come into
its own. In Britain there are no town meetings or referendaexcept in unusual and
rarecircumstances.59Thereis no initiativeand no recall,and thereare no primaries.
Nor, as we have seen, is there any requirementthat the decision-making process
be conducted before the public gaze; and organized groups are not seen as having
a natural right to take part in public policy-making to anything like the extent
that they are in the United States. The greater importance attached to group
politics at the local level in the United States is well brought out by Almond and
Verba: those who would enlist the aid of an informal group to influence an unjust
local regulation constituted 56 per cent of the sample in the United States and only
34 per cent in Britain. For the 'competents' the gap was even wider, 74 per cent to
43 per cent.60
Important as are the other forms of participationin certainparts of the country,
the number and influence of organized groups is probably the most important
reflection of the greater emphasis given to direct participation in the United
States. Their numberand their importance for city governmenthas been remarked
on by all observers. Sayre and Kaufman have described the group system in one
major city, New York, thus:
It functionsin sucha waythatanyonewhofeelsstronglyenoughaboutanygovernmental
decisionneednot feel, or be, entirelyhelplessto do somethingaboutit. No one is entirely
alienated;the statement'You can'tfightCityHall!' does not describethe governmental
processthatnow obtainsin New York. For any groupcan fightCityHall, almostevery
groupdoes, and manyare remarkablyeffective.Governmentaldecisionsby all public-
office-holdersin the city are affectedby non-governmental groups.6l
Nothing comparable to this could be said for any city in Britain. This is partly
because local groups in British cities often by-pass the local council hoping to
achieve their aims through their national organization or by a direct approach to
'the minister'.62It is possible indeed that the extent of group politics in British
cities may be underestimated because the groups are less politically visible; this
is because they have links with the council through the formal machinery of
representation, and we shall come to this aspect in a moment. Nevertheless, there
is little doubt that the notion that all authority should derive from the people is
not part of the British democratic ethos; on the contrary, there is a very strong
belief that government should strike a balance between response to the popular
will and the autonomous exercise of authority. Whether this means that British
city government is less democratic than the American is doubtful, as we shall see
later, nor is it clear that more autonomous government necessarily implies less
59 The nearest equivalent is the Parish Meeting which is open to all electors of the parish and
governs the activities of those villages without a parish council. Parish councils too are required
to get approval for their annual budget from a Parish Meeting.
60 Almond and
Verba, The Civic Culture, p. 194, Table 5.
61
Sayre and Kaufman, Governing New York City, pp. 514-15.
62 H.
Scarrow, 'Policy Pressures by British Local Government', Comparative Politics, IV
(1971), 1-28.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered I9
participation; but it does mean that groups are probably less important in British
local government.
The conclusion that this pair of opposed attributesis therefore broadly correct
needs considerable qualification however. In the first place, there is some doubt
as to how far in practice group activity in American cities, if not the other aspects
of direct participation so far discussed, extends beyond the middle and upper
classes. As Rose has summarizedthe position in relation to group activity gener-
ally in the United States: 'the largest proportion of lowest income people in our
society do not participate in voluntary associations and they therefore have little
contact with persons of other classes and little power in the community as a whole.
The lower income person is effectively, although not legally, segregated in his
neighbourhood, his church, and possibly labour union.'63Or, more forcefully, as
Schattschneiderputs it: 'Thereis a greatwealth of data supporting the proposition
that participation in private associations exhibits a class bias . .. The flaw in the
pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper class accent.
Probably about 90 per cent of the people cannot get into the pressure system.'64
Another qualification that must be made is perhaps more vital in assessing
participation since it concerns the numbers, the conditions of election, and the
role of the elected members who directly participatein government. To cite these
as measures of 'participation' may seem a somewhat novel approach; public
participation in current parlance has come to refer largely to participatory
activities outside the formal processes of government. But, whatever the merits
may be of such an inside/outside distinction, it has the clear drawback that it
makes it impossible to draw other important, qualitative distinctions between
representative systems - distinctions that have a direct bearing on the extent to
which ordinary people can take part in their own government.
One such, admittedly crude, qualitative distinction concerns the actual size of
city councils. In general it can be argued that American councils, especially for
the larger cities, are less participatory since they are smaller than their British
counterparts.65 To cite the size of the elected council as a measure of the
63 A. Rose, ThePowerStructure
(New York: OxfordUniversityPress, I967)quotedin Berry,
The Sociology of Grass Roots Politics, who also cites M. Hausknecht, The Joiners (New York:
Bedminster Press, I962).
64 E.
Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt Reinhart, 1960), pp. 34-5.
65An accurateand wholly fair comparisonis difficultto make becausein the United States
there are other elected bodies such as school boards and special districts,whereasin Britain
there is usually(i.e. in the county boroughs)only one elected body for the whole urbanentity.
The Britishsituationtoo is complicatedby the existenceof aldermenwho constituteone quarter
of the whole council but are not electedby the electoratebut by the councillors.Ignoringthese
complicationsfor the moment,a crudecomparisonof the size of urbancouncilsin the two coun-
tries may be made. For the United Statesthe Censusof Governments for 1967(Tables I and 2)
gives an averageof eightmembersfor the councilsof all municipalities.Thereis no comparable
overallaveragefor Britishurbancouncils,but fromfiguresin the MaudReport(Vol. 5, Appendix
A, Table i) it is possibleto arriveat an overallaverageof twenty-twomembers.So in crudeterms,
Americancouncils are a little more than one-thirdthe size of theirBritishcounterparts.But if
we add to the Americanfigurethe averagesize for school boards (4-9 members)given in the
Censusand all special districts(2-9 members)we get a combinedaverageof about i6 members
20 SHARPE
USA Britain
The ratios for the American cities leave out of account other elected officersand,
where they exist, elected school boards and elected special districts, etc. as these
were not obtainable. And it is difficultto see how they could be incorporated into
the ratios if they were available. Even if they were incorporated, however, it seems
clear that the American ratios would remain substantiallyhigher than the British.
It seems likely that not only is the ratio of elected to electors lower in Britain
but that opportunities for area interests to be represented are also greater.
Virtuallyall urban authorities except for about one quarterof the urban districts66
in Britain operate under a ward system, whereas in the United States 60 per cent
of all municipalities over I0,000 elect councilmen at large and only 23 per cent
elect on a ward basis.67 Because British cities operate under a ward system of
election, the lower ratios of elected to electors may, as Newton68 suggests, not
only afford greaterpossibilities for participation in general, but also provide local
area interests better opportunities for getting them directly represented on the
council than is possible in American cities. What research there is on the British
side does suggest that most councillors have a highly developed network of
contacts covering a wide rangeof formal and informal, local and regional bodies.69
One study of Newcastle-under-Lymeactually found that local groups 'need apply
little pressure because they are naturally representedon the Borough Council'.70
Newton and Smallwood71have also pointed out that, despite the much greater
recognition given to group interests in American city government, British urban
councils are required by statute to co-opt representativesof group interests from
outside the council directly on to the service committees, i.e. directly into the
decision-making process embracing broad policy and day-to-day casework.72
Too much should not be made of this since it only applies to certain services and
the likelihood of the majority party ensuring that the group representativeis also
a sympathizer with their own party is a strong one. Nevertheless, it appears that
we need to modify the usual assumption that the American system offers greater
opportunities for group participation in government.
There is another aspect of American city government that raises doubts about
the accuracy of the assumption that it is more participatory and its government
less autonomous than the British. In I96I some 28 per cent of all American
municipalities and 50 per cent of those of over 50,000 population were run on the
city manager plan, whereas there is nothing remotely comparable to the city
manager plan in British city government.73Whatever else may be said for the
plan, it is by definition parsimonious in the opportunities it offers to elected
representatives to take part in decision-making. This important distinguishing
66
Stanyer, County Government in England and Wales, Table B/I.
67 Banfield and Wilson, City Politics, p. 88.
68
Newton, City Politics in Britain and America, p. 7.
69 Statement
of Evidence to Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London by the
Centre for Urban Studies (London: Centre for Urban Studies, I959), p. 9; L. J. Sharpe, A
MetropolisVotes(London: London School of Economics, I962), pp. 44-6; A. Rees and T.
Smith,Town Councillors (London:Acton Society, I964), pp. 52-6; Maud Report, Vol. 2, p. 85.
70 F.
Bealeyet al., Constituency Politics (London:Faber, I965), p. 380.
71
Newton, City Politics in Britain and America, p. 9 and Community Decision-makers, p. 7;
F. Smallwood, Greater London - The Politics of Metropolitan Reform (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill,I964), p. 105.The MaudReport,Vol. 5; AppendixA, TableXXIV, givesan averageof
sixty-nineco-opted membersper urban authoritybut this figureincludesmembersof school
governingand managingbodies.
72 For education (the most importantservicewhere co-option occurs) local authoritiesare
not, in fact, requiredto co-opt from outside the council, but all of them have interpretedthe
I944 EducationAct (the governingstatute)as if it did requirethem to do so.
73 Banfieldand Wilson, City Politics, p. I69.
22 SHARPE
issues: 'Strong minorities block policy change even more often in municipalities
than in the US Senate'.79 We shall return to this problem later. Second, a
flourishing group system may reflect not so much a positive adherence to demo-
cratic principles (as is usually the case with referenda and recall, for example) as
the inadequacy of the formal participatory process that we have just examined.
It seems plausible to assume that the need for pressuregroups will be substantially
greater in a system that appears to have a heavily biased representation of the
upper end of the social scale on its councils; has a high ratio of representativesto
represented; has often little or no geographical spread of representation; has
infrequent elections; has no compulsory representationof interested groups; has
only a relatively weak attachment to voting among its citizens; and finally may
exclude elected representativesfrom large areas of policy-making.
As Schattschneiderand later Lowi have remindedus, we are by now sufficiently
detached from the worst excesses of'group theory' that arose out of the rediscovery
of Bentley in the I950s to view the notion that pressure groups are the acme of
democratic government with some scepticism.80They may even be a reflection of
its deficiencies. In this instance the proliferation of groups in American city
government may reflect the imperfections of its formal representativeprocesses
as much as its democratic health. Viewed in this way, some at least of pressure
group activity becomes a substitute for normal democratic procedures, and this
reminds us that, although all industrial societies - totalitarian, oligarchical,
despotic - may throw up pressure groups, only democracies have free elections.
But Schattschneider'sand Lowi's scepticism concerning the relevance of group
theory for democracy was not, until quite recently at any rate, widely shared.
Organized groups have traditionally been assigned an exceptionally important
place in the American view of democracy. As Dahl has put it: 'A central guiding
thread of American constitutional development has been the evolution of a
political system in which all the active and legitimate groups in the population
can make themselves heard at some crucial stage in the process of decision
making'.81 But in practice, do 'the active and legitimate groups' embrace all
79A. Campbelland J. Burkheadin H. Perloffand L. Wingo,eds., Issuesin UrbanEconomics
(Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsPress, I968),p. 609, quotedin P. Madgwick,AmericanCityPolitics
(London: Routledge, I970).
80 Schattschneider,Semi-SovereignPeople; T. Lowi, The End of Liberalism(New York:
W. W. Norton, I969).
81 Dahl, A Preface to DemocraticTheory,p. 137. This strong tendency in the American
traditionto view organizedgroupsas an essentialcharacteristicof democracycan occasionally
undermineplain common sense when applied comparatively.This is illustratedin Banfield's
study,TheMoralBasisof a BackwardSociety(New York: FreePress, 1958)wherewe areinvited
on the firstpage to comparethe multifariouscommunitygroupsof St George, a small town in
Utah, with the Lucaniantown which Banfieldgives the fictional name of Montegrano.Now
St Georgemay itselfbe somethingof a specialcase sinceUtah was foundedby a highlycohesive,
and for a long periodembattled,Protestantreligiousgroup,the Mormons.It mightthereforebe
expectedto exhibit a greatersense of communityamong its citizens than most towns. But to
compareany partof the United States,outside,say, Appalachiaor the Deep South,withwhatis
one of the most impoverishedand backwardareas of mainlandItaly makes it difficultto take
the comparativemethod seriouslyin so far as it is supposedto tell us, as Banfieldhopes, about
24 SHARPE
sections or even the majority of the community ? As we have seen, there are some
doubts about this. If they do not, then such a tradition is in serious danger not
merely of being unrepresentative but of permanently excluding some of the
community from the political process. As Schattschneider emphasizes: 'The
notion that the pressure system is automatically representative of the whole
community is a myth fostered by the universalizing tendency of modern group
theories. Pressurepoliticsis a selectiveprocessill designed to serve diffuseinterests.
The system is skewed, loaded and unbalanced in favour of a fraction of a
minority.'82
6. Pluralist/Monist
The last characteristicattribute of American city government that is said to differ
sharply from the British is its highly pluralist character.In American city govern-
ment there is seldom any conception of the public interestin a monist sense; rather,
the public interest emerges in a pluralistfashion, policy being established 'through
the open agitation of issues and the open clash of opposing groups in a free
political market place'.83This means that full-time professional experts are fewer
and the work of those who are employed is carefullycircumscribed.In the govern-
ment of British cities, it is claimed, the policy-making process is less open and the
public interest is viewed not so much as the resultant of opposing group interests
but more as 'the right way' to tackle a problem, given the particularcircumstances.
This means that greater autonomy is granted to the full-time professional expert
by the council and by the electorate. In the same way that the social class below is
said to defer to the social class above, so the elected member and the public are
said to defer to the expert.
There is an obvious and close link between the pluralistconception of the public
interest in American urban government and the dominant role of groups, but
since this aspect has already been touched on the link will not be discussed further
at this juncture. Nor will the democratic objections that arise in relation to the
notion of a pluralist ratherthan a monist public interest. These will be considered
in Part II of this paper. Attention instead will be concentrated on the allegedly
weaker place of the bureaucratin American city government, which is seen to be
directly associated with the more pluralistcharacterof American city government.
84 There is one situation where it may be accurateto talk of deference.In those Labour-
controlled British urban councils with a dominant working-classleadership,an element of
deferencemay creepinto its relationswith the middle-classprofessionalofficers.But thereis no
evidencethat such exists. If anythingthe Labour Party appearsto keep a tighterrein on its
officersthan the Conservatives.
85 A. H. Marshall,'LocalGovernmentAdministration
Abroad',in MaudReport,Vol. 4, p. 66.
86
Lowi, TheEndof Liberalism,p. 201. Lowi somewhatconfusinglycalls these bureauchiefs
'bosses of the New Machines'.
26 SHARPE
American professional, 'unlike his British counterpart, is not limited by the self-
denying rectitude of a corporate profession; he is rather a freelance willing to sell
his talents elsewhere'.87Moreover, the majority of American cities, though not of
course the majority of the American urban population, operate under a non-
partisan system.88In those that have not adopted the city managerplan the absence
of a party organization may leave much less elbow room for the elected leadership
to make major, politically sensitive, decisions than is available to the political
leadership in British cities who are able to command the support of a disciplined
party. As Banfield and Wilson have pointed out, in the absence of a strong party
organization something has to fill the void and it may be the bureaucrat.89
A second, more important doubt about the assumptionthat the Americansystem
is less bureaucratizedthan the Britishis that it leaves out of account the remaining
non-partisan American cities which are run under the city manager plan. As we
noted earlier, some 1,800 cities, or a quarterof all municipalities and half of those
over 50,000 population, have adopted the plan. The plan takes many forms and
in some cities the degree of bureaucratizationis modified by other factors. There
are, for example, the 16 per cent of those that have adopted the plan which have
retained partisan elections and ward-based system. In others the manager has a
decidedly subordinate position. But the formal duties of a city manager involve a
concentration of power in the hands of a non-elected official that would be viewed
as intolerable in Britain. As we noted earlier, even the comparatively modest
proposals of the Maud Report for a chief executive officer as the leader of a team
of chief officers has received only a muted response from urban councils in
Britain.90
It would be wrong to claim that resistance to the chief executive officer comes
from the politicians alone; it is an alliance of the elected members, who have a
strong allegiance to particular services and see the chief executive as a potential
generalist mandarin, and the existing specialist chief officers, whose motives
hardly requireexplanation. The British resistanceto the Maud Report's relatively
mild form of managerialism is not, then, derived wholly from the pure milk of
democracy. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the United States has gone further
than most in making over a large slice of its city government to bureaucrats. In
the city manager cities, the bureaucratsare particularlypowerful ones - probably
more powerful than even the formal responsibilitiesof the managerwould suggest.
Though not exactly friendly critics of the plan admittedly, Banfield and Wilson
convincingly conclude that, given the position in which the city manageris placed,
he will always add to his power. This is partly because of his monopoly of infor-
mation, but also because the politically exposed non-partisan councilman will
87
Madgwick,AmericanCityPolitics, p. 95.
88 Lee, 'City Elections', Table I.
89 Banfieldand Wilson, CityPolitics,passim.
90'Only fourteen authoritiesrecord any formal decision taken on the role of the clerk to
bringit in line with the conception of the chief executiveofficer.'R. Greenwoodet al., Public
Administration, XLVII (1969),289-306, p. 296. See also Greenwoodet al., New Patternsof Local
GovernmentOrganization,p. 44, Table 19.
AmericanDemocracy Reconsidered 27
inevitably try to shift responsibility on to the city manager for any issue that is
controversial.9'
The city manager system is not the only important feature of American city
government that casts doubt on the assumption that it is relatively free from
bureaucratization.Special districts have probably proliferatedmore in the United
States than in any other comparabledemocracy and are now more numerousthan
the cities themselves.92In 1957 they constituted thirteen out of every twenty units
of local government and most of them are non-elected.93 Direct comparisons
with Britain are difficult to make because the distribution of services between
local government and the senior governmentsis very different;some services that
are the responsibilityof special districtsin the United States are run by state public
corporations in Britain. Nevertheless, there are a numberof servicesrun by special
districts in the United States, such as highways, bridges, garbage removal,
sewage and planning, that are normally the direct responsibility of local govern-
ment proper in Britain, and there is certainly nothing in British cities comparable
to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port of New
York Authority. Both are apparently stronger financially than New York city
government itself and together they administer massive and ever-expanding
chunks of public investment though they are apparentlyonly loosely responsible,
if at all, to any popularly elected authority.94As one observer has put it, the two
authorities function 'In a relatively independent fashion, on a basis paralleling
the "sphere of influence" doctrine in international relations'.95Yet another critic
has claimed that the Port Authority 'seems to run itself, accountable to no one
except its own bondholders'.96
These are exceptional special purpose authorities, undoubtedly, and they
hardly representthe general run of the species in the United States. But according
to Banfield and Wilson they do not seem to be all that different: 'Because they are
independent of other governments, of the voters and to a large extent of the
legislatures, special districts are a very important element of decentralization in
urban governmental systems'.97Special district authorities, then, appear to play
91Banfieldand Wilson, City Politics,p. 175.
92R. G. Smith, Public Authorities,Special Districts and Local Government
(Washington:
National Associationof Counties, 1964),p. LX.
93J. Bollens, Special District Governmentsin the United States
(Berkeley: University of
CaliforniaPress, 1957), p. 2.
94The New York MetropolitanTransportationAuthoritymay be answerableto neitherthe
City nor the State. This was certainlythe position when the authoritywas the Triborough
Bridgeand TunnelAuthority:the New York Court of Appeals decision in New YorkPost v.
Robert Moses in I96I ruled that the Authority'is not an arm of the city of New York nor an
arm or agencyof the state' (Smith,PublicAuthorities,p. 89). The Port of New York Authority
is formallyanswerableto both the Governorsof New Jerseyand New York states.But although
theirlegalaccountabilityis rathershadowy,theremay be otherconstraintson both Authorities'
activities.See Sayreand Kaufman,GoverningNew YorkCity,p. 337.
95R. Wood, 1,400 Governments(Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, I96I), p. 128.
96 T. W.
Kheel, 'The Port AuthorityStranglesNew York' in D. M. Gordon,ed., Problemsin
Political Economy (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1971), p. 445.
97Banfieldand Wilson, City Politics,p. 84.
28 SHARPE
a significant role in American city government and, taken together with the high
proportion of city managers and the fragmentation of the structurein the mayoral
systems, we may conclude that the American system is undoubtedly more
'pluralist' than the British. It seems more than doubtful, however, whether this
means that its non-elected officials are more politically accountable or that in
general it is more restrictive of bureaucraticautonomy.
This concludes Part I of the article. In Part II we shall turn to consider American
urban government in the light of attributes of democracy that might be thought
important but tend not to be raised when urban government is discussed in the
United States.