New York City Politics: Governing Gotham

Chapter 1: Introduction

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the governance of American cities is influenced by a variety of forces. These forces include the fiscal needs of the cities’ political systems and the constraints that affect the systems’ ability to raise revenue; the cities’ position in the American federal system; and the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the cities’ populations. No city illustrates the influence of these forces better than New York City. Over the past several decades, the study of urban politics has produced a number of approaches to explain the behavior of urban political systems. Many of these approaches have succeeded in addressing some, but not all, of the abovementioned forces. Moreover, few studies have attempted to address how the divergent yet at times overlapping nature of these forces affects a single urban political system. This work will examine how those critical forces—economic/ fiscal, intergovernmental, and social—affect the governance of New York City. The Governance of the City’s Political System Governance of the city’s political system involves a complex set of functions around three broad themes: democratic accountability, the delivery of public goods and services, and the maintenance of civil harmony. These three themes incorporate the political system’s goal of processing inputs and producing outputs while promoting system stability and survival (Easton ). First, the theme of democratic accountability concerns the extent to which the leaders of the political system respond to the demands of the people and are held accountable to the people. Democratic accountability depends on elections but also on the representative nature of the entire political system, including interest groups, political parties, and the executive branch of government. The second theme, the delivery of goods and services, concerns the ability of the political system to 1 1 Introduction Chap-01.qxd 8/16/07 1:49 PM Page 1 deliver those public goods and services vital to the city. This theme includes the delivery of those services that over time have been deemed critical to urban governments, such as police, fire, sanitation, public health, and education. The service delivery function also encompasses amenities such as parks, welfare, and social services that promote health and a level of well-being for all citizens regardless of income and that add to the city’s overall quality of life. Over time, the service delivery responsibilities of urban political systems have more or less stabilized, but are still influenced by available resources and citizen demands. The third theme, the maintenance of civil harmony, recognizes that there will be conflicts among those involved in the political system in regard to decisions concerning the delivery of public goods and services and the response to citizen demands. Political system decisions create winners and losers. The theme of civil harmony suggests that governance of the political system is best served when those active in the system remain committed to the process by which decisions are made, regardless of whether they win or lose those key decisions. Those in the political system promoting this theme cannot sit idly by and hope that commitment to the process emanates from the democratic procedures themselves . Commitment to civil harmony within a democratic process is achieved through a number of formal and informal mechanisms. First, civil harmony is advanced through an array of inclusive democratic procedures allowing all citizens to participate in the political decision-making process. These procedures must allow all to participate equally, however indirectly, in those decisions affecting the delivery of public goods and services. Second, civil harmony is advanced through the process’s distributive decisions. There must be some minimal level of fairness in the distribution of public goods and services, such that even if the delivery of goods and services is not equal, it approaches equitability. A third way civil harmony is advanced is through the behavior of the leaders of the political system. Their behavior amid political conflict and reaction to political setbacks sets a tone and acts as a cue for their followers as well as for their political adversaries . Leaders help set the parameters for what is acceptable political behavior. Civil harmony is not synonymous with civil order, although a lack of civil harmony may result in a decline in civil order. This book will examine how the social, economic, and intergovernmental forces affect the governance of the city. For the most part, the impact of these forces on city governance is divergent. First, each of the forces pulls the...