80 4: Public Institutional Th eory
David Mayhew (1991) and Morris Fiorina (1996) argue that divided gov-
ernments are as likely as unifi ed governments to produce important legislation
because the credibility of legislation is increased when enacted under divided
rather than unifi ed governments. Th e problems, of course, are in carrying out
policy under the conditions of divided government, and here the arguments
run the other way. Divided government makes it considerably more diffi cult to
carry out public policy eff ectively (Heclo 1977).
Both interpretations agree that structure matters. Th ey disagree only about
how it matters. But states are hard to compare. American cities are much easier
to compare, and they exhibit many of the same institutional design characteristics
as states.
In the progressive era, the municipal reform movement was a remarkably suc-
cessful incremental process of institutional redesign for the purpose of changing
the allocation of power and policy outcomes of American cities. In the late 1800s,
the structure of almost all American cities was based on the separation-of-powers
and checks-and-balances model used at the state and national levels. Political par-
ties were as important in cities as they were at the state and national levels. Mayors
were strong and sometimes fairly described as bosses. City employment was based
largely on patronage, and widespread corruption was associated primarily with
either skimming contracts or taking kickbacks from city contractors and vendors.
Reallocating power and changing institutional behavior were accomplished by
changing the institutional rules and altering institutional roles. Nonpartisan elec-
tions replaced partisan elections. Civil service systems replaced patronage. Strong
bid and purchase controls were adopted. Th e election of city council members
changed from districts to at large. And an entirely new form of city government
was invented, a form based not on the separation of powers but on the corporate
model. In this model, the “board,” or city council, was small, was elected at large,
and comprised volunteers who stood for election as part of their civic duty rather
than as part of building political careers. Th is new form of city council passed
ordinances, set policy, established a city budget, and then passed the day-to-day
work of the city on to a professional: the city manager. Th us was born a new pro-
fession and a cadre of educated and trained professionals dedicated to effi cient
and clean city government (Adrian 1955).
Fast-forward one hundred years and the results of redesigning the structure
of city government are, by any measure, impressive. More than half of Ameri-
can cities use the council-manager form of government, which is similar to the
parliamentary form of national government. Virtually all cities are operated on
a day-to-day basis by merit-appointed civil servants. Serious corruption, such
as fraud and kickbacks, is rare and tends to be associated with old-line “unre-
formed” mayor-council-form cities. Political parties are relatively unimport-
ant at the city level in American politics, and mayors are, as a generalization,
much less powerful and visible than they once were. Not only is professional
city management powerful in council-manager form government, but also many