Governmental Structure and Political Environment: A Statistical Note about American Cities

The commission plan and the city manager plan-new forms of city government launched during the early years of this century—were both devised in response to local circumstances, but were soon being heralded as improvements over the then universal mayor-council system. Enthusiasts for both of these new governmental structures claimed many advantages for them. The hopes for the city manager plan seem to have been somewhat better founded, but the passage of time has shown that both plans had limitations which the reformers did not foresee.Almost all of the early discussion about the relative merits of the three plans neglected the role of political environment. Proponents of the different systems deduced their arguments from “the principles” on which the plans were based. A three-year study of the actual operation of manager government in the late 1930s called attention to the importance of varying local conditions. “The tremendous variety of local political conditions and administrative habits apparent in the fifty cities covered by this survey,” the authors concluded, “makes it impossible to [give general answers to] many questions about the city manager plan.”