58 The two-party system
The New England town is an interesting institution, but throughout the
United States it is the counties and the cities that are the major provid-
ers of local government services and the focus of local political organisation.
Townships exist in some areas, but they have few functions and little power.
There are over 3,000 counties in the United States. The county provides local
services, such as the construction and maintenance of highways and bridges,
and administers welfare services which are financed by the federal, state and
local governments. A county board of supervisors or commissioners is elected
to oversee the county’s affairs, but there may be quite a large number of
other elected officials or boards concerned with one or other of the county’s
services, in particular the sheriff and the district, or county, attorney. This
pattern of counties covers the whole of the United States with the exception
of Alaska, Connecticut and Rhode Island, but the counties vary enormously
in size and importance. Loving County in west Texas has a population of 71;
other counties include large urban areas, or great cities, or parts of cities.
Thus Cook County, Illinois, contains the city of Chicago, and Los Angeles
County, California, has a population of over 10 million people.
Superimposed upon this pattern of counties, towns and townships is the
vast fabric of cities spreading across the continent. Municipal corporations
with their charters were established in the colonies along English lines from
the beginning. The enormous growth of urbanisation means that over 80 per
cent of the total population now live in the cities. The status and power of the
governments that serve these urban areas are so varied that it is very difficult
to formulate generalisations about them. At one extreme is the small city of
a few thousands, and at the other the City of New York with a population of
over 8 million. Most cities have a city council of up to thirty or so members,
and a directly elected mayor. Senior officials of the city may also be directly
elected, and the relative power of council and mayor varies greatly.
The fragmentation of political organisations and of decision-making is
most evident in the government of the great metropolitan areas, which have
emerged as the dominant pattern of life in modern America. These great
conglomerations of urban development, with populations running into sev-
eral millions, may extend across state boundaries and encompass a number
of cities as well as numerous other semi-autonomous local government units.
The New York metropolitan area bridges three states – New York, New Jersey
and Connecticut – engulfing the cities of New York, Jersey City and Newark
and many hundreds of other governmental units. Whereas the economic and
social problems of the metropolis are closely interrelated throughout the
whole area, political organisation is decentralised along historical bounda-
ries that seem to have little relevance to modern problems.
The structure of the parties
The different patterns of political behaviour that we found in the American
electorate, if they are truly reflective of deeply significant attitudes, must be