Description
Book SynopsisAriane Liazos examines the urban reform movement that swept through the country in the early twentieth century and its unintended consequences.
Reforming the City offers powerful insights into the relationships between scholarship and reform and between the structures of city government and urban democracy.
Trade ReviewA century ago, progressive reformers often thought expertise and nonpartisanship were the solution to extreme polarization and inequality in U.S. politics, as they do now. But Ariane Liazos dramatizes the unintended consequences of changes pursued in hundreds of U.S. cities in the early 1900s. The findings in
Reforming the City hold important lessons for today’s democracy reformers, along with all students of American history and politics. -- Theda Skocpol, Harvard University
This well-researched volume offers an important new perspective on an era of grassroots democratic reform that is highly relevant to our urgent social, political, and economic crises today, including a useful focus on unexpected alliances, unintended consequences, and lost opportunities. -- Robert D. Putnam, author of
The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It AgainIn this comprehensive, provocative, and richly nuanced study, Ariane Liazos brilliantly shows how progressive reformers forged coalitions to end corruption, improve efficiency, and inspire civic participation in urban governance. Understanding their aims, the challenges they faced, and the surprising consequences of their efforts is indispensable for historians, political scientists, and activists mobilizing today to address the persistent tensions between administration and democracy. -- James T. Kloppenberg, author of
Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American ThoughtWhy are cities, once the birthplace of Progressive reform, often considered undemocratic today? How is it that Americans feel closest to their local governments and yet fail to participate actively in them? These and other puzzles drive Ariane Liazos’s important study of how a wide range of actors joined together a century ago to remake how cities were governed and the unintended consequences of their efforts. This book has much to teach us about the past, but it also holds compelling lessons for our own day. -- Lizabeth Cohen, author of
Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban AgeReforming the City is the most thorough and persuasive study of municipal reform in American cities I have ever read. This detailed account is the most important work ever written on the topic. -- Robert Fairbanks, University of Texas at Arlington
Ariane Liazos has written an ambitious, elegant, and well researched book. -- Amy Bridges, University of California, San Diego
A compelling explanation for better understanding the struggles to restructure municipal government in many American cities between 1900 and 1930. . . . Highly recommended. * Choice *
Ariane Liazos has written a definitive account of how the council-manager system of governance - usually paired with at-large nonpartisan elections - became the dominant form of local governance, ultimately replacing ward-based partisan elections in many localities. * Political Science Quarterly *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Urban Reform, Coalitions, and American Political Development
1. The Emergence of the Movement for “Good City Government”: Municipal Reform Associations, c. 1880–1900
2. “Saved by the Scholar”: Political Science, the
Municipal Program, and the National Municipal League, c. 1890–1900
3. The
Municipal Program and Early Campaigns for Charter Reform, c. 1895–1910
4. “The Franchise Problem”: Home Rule, Charter Reform, and the Provision of Public Services, c. 1900–1915
5. The Commission Plan, c. 1900–1915
6. “Whether Democracy and Efficiency Are Inherently Irreconcilable”: Professionalization and Expertise in Municipal Reform, c. 1905–1920
7. “The Transition to Government by Experts”: The Origins and Spread of Commission/City Manager Government, 1912–1925
8. The Legacy of the Movement for Urban Reform: State Building and Popular Control
Epilogue: The End of the Coalitions
Acknowledgments
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Publication Abbreviations
Notes
Index
