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American Democracy Reconsidered: Part II and Conclusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

L. J. Sharpe
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Extract

The overall conclusion to be drawn from the discussion contained in Part I of this article is that, even in respect of what are usually regarded in the literature as being some of its more distinctively democratic characteristics, the American system of urban government is lacking. It may even be in these respects less democratic than the British. Whether it is agreed that the attributes discussed in Part I are those of a democracy or not, by its own lights American city government is deficient.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 129 - 167
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I. Quoted by J. S. Mill in his review in the Westminster Review for October 1835 which is reprinted in Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. G. Himmelfarb (New York: Anchor Books, 1963), p. 199. In case it is thought that in quoting Tocqueville I am already backsliding on the moratorium suggested in Part I, it must be emphasized that Tocqueville is being quoted here as a theorist of democracy and not as a student of American politics.

2 Eckstein, H.w, ‘The British Political System’, in Beer, S. et al. , Patterns of Government (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 77.Google Scholar

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4 Banfield, E. and Wilson, J., City Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 76.Google Scholar

5 See Allcock, J. B., ‘Populism: a Brief Biography’, Sociology, V (1971), 371–87, for a discussion of the use of the term among sociologists.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 Dahl, , Polyarchy, p. 3.Google Scholar

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10 Lucien Pye has described this type of extra-mural politics and its benefits thus: ‘Both the drama and the mechanism of politics can attract people, engrossed either consciously or unconsciously, in all manner of personal concerns which cannot in any way find their solutions in the enactment of any particular public policies. Politics can give legitimacy to feelings of aggression and hostility, and a cloak of virtue to sordid motives. Politics can also provide the excitement of creativity and the sense of comradeship to people who have long felt themselves suppressed and isolated. People who come to politics out of such motivations will not be satisfied with the realization of any particular goals of public policy; for them the meaning of politics is to be found in the drama of participation, in the excitement of controversy and the security of associating and above all on the reassurance of being superior to others. For such people one alternative of public policy can be quite as satisfying as another.’ Politics, Personality and Nation Building (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 12Google Scholar quoted in Levine, E., The Irish and Irish Politicians (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966).Google Scholar

11 See Hoffman, S., ‘Paradoxes of the French Political Community’ in Hoffman, et al. , In Search of France (New York: Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar and Macrae, D., Parliament, Parties, and Society in France, 1946–1958 (New York: St Martin‘s Press, 1967), Chap. 2.Google Scholar

12 Kornhauser, W., The Politics of Mass Society (London: Routledge, 1960).Google Scholar

13 Pateman, , Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 73.Google Scholar

14 Quoted in R. Merton ‘ The Latent Functions of the Machine ’ reprinted from his Social Theory and Social Structure in E. Banfield, ed., Urban Government (New York: Free Press, 1964).

15 Bachrach, P., The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

16 Greater social and economic equality would not alone be sufficient and the case for democratizing the authoritarian character of non-governmental organizations, particularly industry, is a persuasive one. See Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, Chap. 4.

17 Janowitz, M., ed., Community Political Systems (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1961), p. 17.Google Scholar

18 The neo-Rousseauans would seem to have cast Schumpeter in a more seminal role than he deserves. As Parry implies, his notion of the inevitability of elite rule is very little different from the later Mosca (Parry, G., Political Elites (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969)Google Scholar, Chap. 6), and Schumpeter's insistence that democracy implies no ideals but is merely a convenient method of governing is a commonplace of British conservative democrats since the end of the nineteenth century of whom see Bassett, R., The Essentials of Parliamentary Democracy (London: Cass, 1964)Google Scholar. It is no accident that Schumpeter takes the British system as his model: Schumpeter, J. A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1943), footnote 10, p. 74.Google Scholar

19 Parry, , Political Elites, p. 138.Google Scholar

20 See Bollens, J. and Schmandt, H., The Metropolis (New York: Harper Row, 1965)Google Scholar, passim.

21 D. Price, ‘The Promotion of the City Manager Plan’ in Banfield, ed., Urban Government.

22 Lowi, T., The End of Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969).Google Scholar

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24 See, for example, on the British side: Mackenzie, W. J. M., ‘Pressure Groups in British Government’, British Journal of Sociology, VI (1955), 133–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plamenatz, J., ‘Interests’, Political Studies II (1954), 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finer, S. E., Anonymous Empire (London: Pall Mall, 1958)Google Scholar; Self, P. and Storring, H., The State and the Farmer (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar; Birch, A., Representative and Responsible Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963)Google Scholar; Grove, J., Government and Industry (London: Longmans, 1964).Google Scholar

25 Hartz, L., The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), pp. 250–1.Google Scholar Lindblom also sees group theory as part of a much longer American political tradition: Lindblom, C. E., The Intelligence of Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 15.Google Scholar

26 Crick, B., The American Science of Politics (London: Routledge, 1959), p. 235.Google Scholar

27 Parry, , Political Elites, p. 125.Google Scholar

28 Wilson, J., ed., City Politics and Public Policy (New York: John Wiley, 1968), p. 13.Google Scholar

29 ‘The Management of Metropolitan Conflict’, in Banfield, ed., Urban Government.

30 Agger, R., Goldrich, D. and Swanson, B., The Rulers and the Ruled (New York: John Wiley, 1964), p. 7.Google Scholar

31 Hawley, W. D. and Wirt, F. M., The Search for Community Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 297.Google Scholar

32 Williams, O. and Adrian, C., Four Cities (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Precisely where the best balance is struck between the need to effect change and the consequential growth of government that this entails on the one hand, and the need to keep government accountable on the other, is a matter for debate. If the scope of government continuum is employed to categorize democratic regimes, it must be combined with an accountability continuum and regimes may then be plotted around the two axes. On the admittedly crude twin assumptions that the scope of government tends to have a direct positive relationship with accountability below a certain level of government activity, but because of the scale effect, accountability declines thereafter with increasing scope of government, it is possible that the distribution of regimes around the two continua would produce a curve similar to those illustrated below:—

34 See also Lineberry, R. and Fowler, E., ‘Reformism and Public Policy in American Cities’, in Bonjean, C. et al. , Community Politics (New York: Free Press, 1971)Google Scholar for a similar tendency to see a government's responsiveness as being in conflict with its capacity to act.

35 Schattschneider, , Semisovereign People, p. 71.Google Scholar Obscurely because, whereas mobilization of bias is an apt description for the first sense in which Schattschneider uses it, that is to say, the formation of groups who wish to resist change (p. 30), it is far less appropriate for describing the reification of the groups’ interests in the institutional arrangements of government which is the second sense (and the usually quoted one) in which he uses the phrase, see p. 71. See also Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M., ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, LVII (1962), 947–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which further develops the point that the institutional arrangements of American city government may exclude the possibility of some policy decisions being made.

36 Barry, B., Political Argument (London: Routledge, 1965), p. 272.Google Scholar Barry's book is amongst many other things a brilliantly sustained and trenchantly argued attack on many of those aspects of populism discussed in this article.

37 I am indebted to Brian Barry for clarifying my own muddled thoughts on this point.

38 Mill was also aware of the inevitability of this relationship in a representative democracy: ‘the people ought to be masters but they are masters who must employ servants more skilful than themselves’, Tocqueville on Democracy in America (Vol. I)’, p. 195.

39 Schattschneider, , Semisovereign People, p. 137.Google Scholar

40 These are, of course, the principal arguments against the use of referenda to decide specific policy issues and it is of some interest that, with the possible exception of Switzerland, the United States is alone among industrial democracies in the extent to which it employs the referendum. See Smallwood, F., ‘Game Politics versus Feedback Politics’ in Morland, E., ed., Capital, Courthouse and City Hall (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966) for a discussion of this problem in relation to metropolitan government reorganization.Google Scholar

41 Vile, M., Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), Chap. 12.Google Scholar

42 Preface to Democratic Theory, p. 31.

43 As, for example, Banfield seems to argue in The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 117.Google Scholar

44 Polsby, for example, in his spirited defence of the American democratic tradition does seem to argue this, see Community Power and Political Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 23.Google Scholar

45 Mackenzie, W. J. M., Free Elections (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958), p. 95.Google Scholar Mackenzie is making the case for rigging the electoral system so as to diminish the electoral strength of Fascists and Communists where they are likely to become a majority. Even this relatively straightforward case has its problems and in general it would be a bold or reckless man who would have no misgivings about citing a concrete illustration of such a situation. But something like it seems to exist at the present time in Northern Ireland where the government is pursuing a policy of limited amelioration of the social and political conditions of the Catholic minority. This is probably the best long term policy if Northern Ireland is to avoid a blood bath, yet it does not find anything like majority support apparently from either Protestants or Catholics. See Rose, R., Governing Without Consensus (London: Faber, 1971), pp. 369–71.Google Scholar

46 See, for example, Bentley, A., The Process of Government (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1949);Google ScholarHagan, C., ‘The Group in Political Science’ in Young, L., ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1958);Google ScholarTruman, D., The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951);Google Scholar and Schubert, G., The Public Interest: A Critique of a Concept (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1961).Google Scholar

47 Schubert, The Public Interest, Chap. 4.

48 Cf. Friedrich, C. J., ed., Nomus V: The Public Interest (New York: Atherton, 1966).Google Scholar

49 Mcconnell, , Private Power and American Democracy, p. 353.Google Scholar

50 Meyerson, M. and Banfield, E., Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1955), P. 322.Google Scholar

51 Meyerson, and Banfield, , Politics, Planning and the Public Interest, p. 327.Google Scholar

52 Banfield, and Wilson, , City Politics, p. 46.Google Scholar

53 Banfield, and Wilson, , City Politics, p. 46.Google Scholar

54 Wolfinger, R. E. and Field, J. O., ‘Political Ethos and the Structure of City Government’, in Goodman, J. S., ed., Perspectives on Urban Politics (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968).Google Scholar

55 The additional evidence in support of the two ethos theory that Banfield and Wilson furnish in their article ‘Public Regardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behaviour’ (in Goodman, ed., Perspectives in Urban Politics) does not materially alter this conclusion.

56 Agger, et al. , The Rulers and the Ruled, p. 21.Google Scholar

57 See Banfield's Unheavenly City for a further elaboration of this portrait of the WASP, especially Chaps. 8 and 11. It is of some interest that in an earlier study with Meyerson an important qualification is made to the later assertion that all the upper social class are community regarding and such attitudes are reserved in the earlier study for ‘at least the professional-intellectual groups among them’, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest, p. 302.

58 D. Miller, for example, sees the preponderance of businessmen as being one of the distinguishing characteristics of American city councils. See his ‘Industry and Community Power Structure’, American Sociological Review, XXIII (1958), 9–15.Google Scholar

59 Barry, , Political Argument, pp. 194–5.Google Scholar

60 See also B. Barry, ‘The Use and Abuse of “The Public Interest"’, in Friedrich, The Public Interest.

61 Barry, , Political Argument, p. 227.Google Scholar For a similar argument see Downes, A., ‘The Public Interest: Its Meaning in a Democracy’, Social Research, XXIX (1962), 1–36.Google Scholar

62 Almond, G. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), Chap. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 222.Google Scholar

64 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 224.Google Scholar

65 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 490.Google Scholar

66 Nordlinger, , The Working Class Tories, pp. 222–3.Google Scholar

67 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 494.Google Scholar

68 Hyman, H. and Sheatsley, P., ‘The Current Status of American Public Opinion’ in Payne, J., ed., The Teaching of Contemporary Affairs (Menasha: George Banta, 1951), p. 22Google Scholar, quoted in Rose, A. M., The Power Structure (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 481.Google Scholar

69 Huntington, S. P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 133.Google Scholar

70 Mcconnell, , Private Power and American Democracy, p. 38.Google Scholar

71 Dahl, R., Pluralist Democracy in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), p.9Google Scholar This is also the view of other observers, see Scott, J., ‘Corruption, Machine Politics and Political Change’, American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), 1142–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Wilson, J., ed., City Politics and Public Policy (New York: Harvard University Press, 1968) p.2Google Scholar

73 Vile, , Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, p. 315.Google Scholar

74 Mcconnell, Even, who is a trenchant critic of populism, concludes that the corruption problem was in the end ‘somehow boring’, Private Power and American Democracy, p. 359.Google Scholar

75 See Lowi, The End of Liberalism, Chap. 5.

76 Croly, H., Progressive Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1914), quoted in Merton ‘The Latent Function of the Machine’.Google Scholar

77 Meyerson, and Banfield, , Politics, Planning and Public Interest, p. 292.Google Scholar

78 Greenstein, F. ‘The Changing Pattern of Urban Party Polities’, in Coulter, P., ed., The Politics of Metropolitan Areas (New York: Crowell, 1967), pp. 62–78.Google Scholar

79 Feudalism, as an important distinguishing characteristic of Europe as compared with the United States, frequently features in the literature as if it were extant at least up to the turn of the century. So often is it mentioned that it is tempting to assume that it has been confused with the existence of an aristocracy and tenant farming. In reality, if there is any country other than Italy among the ‘western democracies’ where feudalism did persist into the modern era, the United States with its plantation system in the Deep South, must be one of the strongest candidates. Even today a system of peonage not far removed from feudalism is endured by many negroes in the Deep South. The emphasis given to feudalism as a factor which Americans escaped seems to be part of a wider tendency to ignore the South altogether when discussing the character of American politics as if it were another country. Dahl, who does make a brave attempt to accommodate the South into his schema when summarizing the conditions for a democracy, rather spoils things by a curate's egg manoeuvre that allows the United States to be a democracy with a non-democracy within it. See his Polyarchy especially Chap. 6.

80 Greenstein, , ‘The Changing Pattern of Urban Party Polities’, pp. 69–70.Google Scholar See Madgwick, P., American City Politics (London: Routledge, 1970)Google Scholar, for another highly favourable interpretation of the role of the machine by a British observer.

81 See Rourke, F., ‘Urbanism and American Democracy’, in Coulter, , ed., Politics of Metropolitan Areas, pp. 447–8.Google Scholar Wilson claimed in 1910 that, ‘Most of the badly governed cities of the civilized world are on this side of the Atlantic, most of the well-governed on the other side’. Quoted in East, J. P., Council-Manager Government (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 42.Google Scholar

82 Wraith, R. W. and Simpkins, L. E., Corruption in Developing Countries (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), Part II.Google Scholar

83 Hofstadter, R., The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), p. 177.Google Scholar

84 Levine, The Irish and Irish Politicians, Chaps. 5 and 6.

85 At least one benefit of the machine that Greenstein lists – upward social mobility – is in some doubt for the Irish. See Levine, The Irish and Irish Politicians, Chaps. 5 and 6, and ‘The Irish’ in Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D. P., Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1963).Google Scholar

86 J. Greenstone and P. Peterson, ‘Reformers, Machines and the War on Poverty’, in Wilson, ed., City Politics and Public Policy.

87 The attitude of the political process school to corruption is dismayingly close to what Wraith and Simpkins describe as the ‘anthropologists” defence of corruption in underdeveloped countries. Corrupt practices are according to this view, ‘essential parts of the culture pattern of people who differ from ourselves and the offering of a gift in return for a service has the honourable sanction of custom and is part of the cement that binds society together. To condemn it is to misunderstand the nature of societies we are discussing, and to abolish it would be to add bewilderment and disruption of communities undergoing an unprecedently rapid change from the tribal to the global organization of society’, Wraith, and Simpkins, , Corruption in Developing Countries, pp. 172–3Google Scholar. Viewed in this light, it is hardly surprising to find that a sizeable literature has grown up which recommends the machine to developing countries. See Scott, , ‘Corruption, Machine Politics and Political Change’, p. 1144.Google Scholar

88 Merton, ‘The Latent Functions of the Machine’.

89 Riesman, D., Individualism Reconsidered (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1954), p. 18.Google Scholar

90 For example, Lipset, S. M., The First New Nation (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1967)Google Scholar, especially Chaps. 5 and 10; Hyman, H., ‘England and America: Climates of Tolerance and Intolerance’ in Bell, D., ed., The Radical Right (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1964)Google Scholar and Bell, D., The End of Ideology (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1960), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

91 Some observers have not merely pointed up the link between corruption and business, but have equated the two: ‘the machine once managed in immigrant-choked cities to fashion a cacophony of concrete, parochial demands into a system of rule that was at once reasonably effective and legitimate… A machine may in fact be likened to a business in which all members are stock-holders and dividends are paid in accordance with what has been invested’; Scott, , ‘Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change’, pp. 1143–4.Google Scholar

92 Your Federal Income Tax 1971 Edition (Washington: Internal Revenue Service, 1971)Google Scholar as quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times, 4 March 1971.

93 Sayre, W. and Kaufman, H., Governing New York City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1960), p. 80.Google Scholar

94 See their City Politics, but also see Wilson's essay in Wilson, ed., City Politics and Public Policy, and Banfield's The Unheavenly City.

95 O., and Handlin, M., The Dimensions of Liberty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 32Google Scholar, quoted in Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.

96 Wood, R., Suburbia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), p. 156.Google Scholar

97 See Rourke, ‘Urbanism and American Democracy’. Also Sayed, A., The Political Theory of American Local Government (New York: Random House, 1966), passim.Google Scholar

98 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, Chap. 2.

99 Although Potter explores the effect of economic abundance on many facets of American life and attitudes, he has little to say about its affect on the institutional arrangements of American politics: D. M. Potter, , People of Plenty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 Dahl, , Polyarchy, p. 53.Google Scholar

101 At about this time Tocqueville wrote to Chabrol: ‘What strikes every traveller in this country … is the spectacle of a society proceeding all alone without guide or support by the single fact of the concourse of individual wills. It is useless to torment the spirit seeking for the government; it is nowhere to be perceived, and the truth is that it does not, so to speak, exist’, quoted in Lerner, M., Tocqueville and American Civilization (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 49.Google Scholar

102 Pizzorno, A., ‘Amoral Familism and Historical Marginality’ in Dogan, M. and Rose, R., eds., European Politics: a Reader (London: Macmillan, 1971).Google Scholar

103 See Truman, T., ‘A Critique of Seymour M. Lipset's Article’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, IV (1971), 497–525CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of some of the differences between the American political tradition and that of the ‘White Commonwealth’ countries.

104 Mill, J. S., Considerations on Representative Government, World's Classics edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), Chap. 16.Google Scholar

105 See Connor, W. ‘Self-Determination, the New Phase’, World Politics, XX (1967), 30–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

106 Dahl, Polyarchy, Chap. 7.

107 ‘Americans still do not have an instinctive trust of other Americans. America is still only self-consciously a nation’: Vile, , Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, p. 335.Google Scholar

108 Where there is not a high degree of ethnic homogeneity, as in the Bern canton, even the normally placid tenor of Swiss democracy has been disrupted. The movement for dividing up the Bern canton to create a new canton for the predominantly French-speaking element of the Bernese Jura is ‘more akin to a movement for national independence than for a local government reform’, Bowen-rees, I., Government by Community (London: Charles Knight, 1971), p. 172.Google Scholar

109 The high point of socialist strength in American city government seems to have been reached in 1917 when they achieved ‘an average vote of 20 per cent in a number of cities’ (Lipset, , First New Nation, p. 295Google Scholar). But the socialists had apparently already established something more than a foothold in city politics before then. In 1912, the year of Debs’ presidential candidature when he got 6 per cent of the national vote, they held 1,200 offices in 340 cities of which seventy-nine were mayoralities in twenty-four states. Weinstein, J., The Decline of Socialism in America 1912–1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967)Google Scholar, quoted in Lasch, C., The Agony of the American Left (New York: Knopf, 1969), p. 35.Google Scholar

110 Lipset, S. M., Agrarian Socialism (New York: Anchor Books, 1968).Google Scholar This is a revised edition of the book which appeared in 1950 and the discussion of the reasons for the absence of a socialist party in America occurs in the new introduction to this edition.

111 Truman, ‘A Critique of Seymour M. Lipset's Article’.

112 Surprisingly little of a systematic character has been written on the link between large electoral areas and support for anti-socialist parties. One study that has examined the link for an English city is Lohé, M. Le, Local Elections in Bradford County Borough, 1937–1967, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1972.Google Scholar

113 Dahl, , Preface to Democratic Theory, p. 81.Google Scholar

114 Greenstone, and Peterson, , ‘Reformers, Machines and the War on Poverty’, p. 270.Google Scholar Levine comes to substantially the same conclusion in relation to the Irish and the machine; ‘the Irish instead of using government to create policies to improve the conditions of life for themselves and others of comparable circumstances, used their power to enhance their political position by increasing their fund of patronage and concentrating on winning elections’, The Irish and the Irish Politicians, p. 135.

115 One of these was, of course, the reform movement itself. Besides making city government ‘cleaner’ another major objective of the movement was to ‘improve the position of the entire lower class’ (Greenstone and Peterson, ‘Reformers, Machines, and the War on Poverty’, p. 270). In at least one area – North Dakota – the socialists and the reform movement did join forces under the banner of the Non-Partisan League. For a time just after the First World War the League extended its influence into northern Minnesota and other neighbouring states. (See Lipset, Agrarian Socialism, Chap. 1.) But it would be wrong to exaggerate the reform movements concern for social welfare; their primary motive was to clean up city government and social amelioration was a by-product not an objective: ‘As they scrubbed and polished their cities, some of them did assist in improving local housing and health codes’: Wiebe, R., Businessmen and Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 212Google Scholar, quoted in East, Councillor-Manager Government, who also points out that Childs always kept the left-wing reformers at arms length; see his Chap. 2.

116 Truman, ‘A Critique of Seymour M. Lipset's Article’.

117 Beer, S., Modern British Politics (London: Faber, 1965), p. 128.Google Scholar The vulnerability of working class organizations that lack an ethical creed is illustrated by the fate of some American trade unions. In 1932 it is estimated that two-thirds of the Chicago trade unions were paying tribute to Al Capone: Pelling, H., ‘Labour and Politics in Chicago’, Political Studies, V (1957), 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

118 Wraith, and Simpkins, (Corruption in Developing Countries, p. 180Google Scholar) attach considerable importance to this moral aspect of the British Labour Party's ethos and its contribution in changing British local government from a highly corrupt to a relatively corruption-free system.

119 For a discussion of the moderating effect of exercising power on Labour Party members in British urban authorities, see Bulpitt, J. G., Party Politics in English Local Government (London: Longmans, 1967) especially Chap. V.Google Scholar For a more detailed study of this phenomenon see M. Goldsmith et al., Party Politics in Salford (forthcoming).

120 This can only be a supposition, but there is some evidence to suggest that it may be morethan this. In a survey of resolutions submitted by local parties to the national annual conferenceof both the Conservative and Labour parties in Britain, it was found that, ‘In the Conservative Party, safe seats display an average of 9·1 per cent more extremist resolutions than hopeless seats. In the Labour Party, hopeless seats adopt 9·2 per cent more extremist resolutions than safe seats’ (Rose, R., ‘Political Ideas of Party Acitivists’ in Rose, R., ed. Studies in British Politics (London: Macmillan, 1966))CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In other words, where the local Conservative parties are less exposed to socialism they are more likely to retain a Conservative stance, whereas the reverse seems to be true for the local Labour parties vis d vis the Conservatives.

121 Beer, Modern British Politics, Chap. V.

122 Rokkan, S. and Campbell, A., ‘Citizen Participation in Political Life: Norway and the US’, International Social Science Journal, XII (1960), 69–99, p. 98.Google Scholar

123 The relationship between party control and the policy outputs of local councils in Britain has yet to be explored in any great depth. But what research that has been done does suggest that there may be a link between Labour Party control and a more expansionary attitude to expenditure generally and for higher expenditure on welfare services. See Boaden, N., Urban Policy-making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Chap. II; Boaden, N. and Alford, R., ‘Sources of Diversity in English Local Government Decisions’, Public Administration, XLVII (1969), 203–23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAlt, J., ‘Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures’, British Journal of Political Science, I (1971), 49–62;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Davies, B. et al. , Variations in Services for the Aged, Occasional Papers on Social Administration No. 40 (London: London School of Economics, 1971).Google Scholar

124 Parkin, F., Class, Inequality and Political Order (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971), Chap. 4.Google Scholar

125 In his appraisal of the impact of party policy in 27 of the major cities in the world Robson concludes: ‘The labour, socialist or social democratic parties normally favour a more generous or extensive provision of social services, such as public housing, education and medical facilities, irrespective of the increase in local taxation which may result, whereas the more conservative parties tend to urge restraint under both headings.’ Robson, W. and Regan, D., eds., Great Cities of the World (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), Vol. I, p. 86.Google Scholar

126 Lipset, , Agrarian Socialism, p. xvii.Google Scholar

127 Dahl, , Pluralist Democracy in the United States, p. 438.Google Scholar

128 The scale of the American trade union movement today is the direct result of two Acts: the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932 which restricted the activities of a hostile judiciary against strikes and picketing and forbade the ‘yellow dog’ contract, and the Wagner Act of 1935 which gave employees the right to organize and instituted collective bargaining and machinery for restraining anti-union employers. The effect of both acts was to more than double trade union membership between 1933 and 1937 from about 3 million to 71/4 million.

129 Except in the sense that a rejigging of the electoral system at all levels of government so as to create much smaller electoral areas would, as we have seen, remove a major obstacle. So too would more strictly enforced limitations on party election expenditure and the removal of restrictions, where they exist, on third parties getting on to the ballot.